The Heart of Juliet Jones Fan Fiction
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Creator: Dave A. Gardener
Single-voiced Fanfiction Serial Audio Book
Synopsis:
The Heart of Juliet Jones is a vintage comic strip by Stan Drake that dates back to the 1950s. Each fan fiction short story is based on one comic strip in a series. Follow along and listen to a story of yesteryear that combines drama, romance, comedy, and a whole lot of heart.
Format: Audio Book
Continuity: Serial
Voices: Single
Genres: Fanfiction, Soap opera
Completion status: Partial
Not tagged: [Maturity] [Creator demographics] [Character demographics] [Country of origin] [Transcript] [Content warnings]
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Episodes:
Part 8: When the interviewee is a lot smarter than you
Tue, 28 May 2024 01:13:45 GMT
Billy Cooper finds himself smack dab in the middle of a quandary. He basks in the beauty of this slice of small town Americana, this little town of Devon, but it’s the mayor of the town, sitting opposite to him in The Restaurant that keeps him on his toes and wishing he were anywhere else.
Part 7: Wooing the interviewee and keeping it cool
Sat, 20 Apr 2024 11:38:24 GMT
When Billy Cooper meets Juliet Jones, it’s awkward all around, but employing his unfailing strategy of charm and wit, Billy plays it suave, believing there’s only one way to win over a woman like Miss Jones.
Part 6: A Mr. Cooper here to see you
Fri, 05 Apr 2024 01:51:32 GMT
Billy Cooper has literally come to town, knocking on the Jones’ door. Now he must fight his inner butterflies if he is going to get anywhere with the Jones girl, whose sister appears to have a crush on him.
Part 5: Miss Jones, I presume?
Sat, 23 Mar 2024 11:43:24 GMT
With ace columnist Billy Cooper away, things at Atlas News Service have slowed to a crashing halt, as the man himself arrives in the small town of Devon in search of Miss Juliet Jones.
Part 4: Primping for Mr. Cooper
Tue, 12 Mar 2024 01:31:39 GMT
After receiving a call from the illustrious newspaper columnist, William Cooper, Julie rushes about town to get herself ready for his visit to see her.
Part 3: Time to hunt down Mayor Juliet Jones
Tue, 05 Mar 2024 01:17:27 GMT
When the famous columnist Billy Cooper finds himself in hot water over an article he wrote, he discovers that the writer of the backlash is Juliet Jones, and his next assignment is her!
Part 2: The typewriter is mightier than the sword
Tue, 27 Feb 2024 01:28:42 GMT
With furious indignation from having been insulted by William G. Cooper, opinion writer for the City Times, Julie strikes back by typing a letter to the editor.
Season 4 - Part 1: The writer who knows nothing… about women
Tue, 20 Feb 2024 01:00:12 GMT
Not much has changed back in Devon for Mayor Juliet Jones, including the hole in her heart that longs for a lifelong companion, but when she reads an opinion column about single women being unattractive or unwilling, she gets righteously indignant.
Part 29: Here’s to Miss Teenager, Runner-up
Tue, 31 Oct 2023 01:56:29 GMT
Description: In the finale of the Miss Teenager pageant stories that have spanned two years and three seasons, Eve Jones steps out onto the stage to proudly receive her award and realize the new dream of being runner-up that she calls “even better than the first.”
Part 28: When all things turn around for good
Mon, 09 Oct 2023 03:56:47 GMT
Description: Having abandoned the contest since hearing the judge’s decision that she did not win the pageant, Eve cries on Julie’s shoulder, only to be told that she needs to get back out on stage for a surprise she never would guess.
Part 27: From storm clouds to sunshine
Wed, 06 Sep 2023 01:47:24 GMT
Description: Broken-hearted Eve Jones runs away from the contest in shame after realizing her defeat, but as her sister consoles her, they hear Eve’s name being called from the stage. Could there be good news after all?
Part 26: When it means too much to you
Wed, 30 Aug 2023 03:37:11 GMT
Description: Just how does one handle defeat like a champion? As Pike Setter wallows in his own version of defeat on the dusty backstage floor, Sally Ann Raton is crowned Miss Teenager U.S.A. Will Eve somehow come to grips with her own loss?
Fri, 25 Aug 2023 03:19:29 GMT
Description: It’s time to know the winner of the Miss Teenager pageant and Eve is too nervous to look. The result could and would and just might change her life forever!
Part 24: The result that would change her life
Tue, 15 Aug 2023 02:40:57 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine, the host of the pageant, is about to read the results of the judges’ decision to crown Miss Teenager. Eve Jones waits with breathless anticipation as she dreams one last time of what her life would like if she won.
Tue, 08 Aug 2023 02:23:25 GMT
Description: As Glenn Sabine stumbles back out onto the stage for the final time at the Miss Teenager pageant, he realizes he is a different man than when this whole shebang started. But backstage, Pike Setter is trying to recover from a good solid whack to the gut. Will he recover in time to wreak havoc on the end of the contest?
Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:20:08 GMT
Description: Backstage a shown was brewing between Pike Setter and his boss Glenn Sabine. With all of Pike’s cards called, and Juliet Jones freed from her prop closet prison hold, it was time for Pike to learn what happens when you dare to mess with the Jones girls.
Wed, 26 Jul 2023 03:50:37 GMT
Description: With the Miss Teenager pageant nearing its final performance, a brawl is about to break out backstage between Julie and Pike. Glenn Sabine is caught in the pickle and needs to choose sides: the mayor from Devon or his illustrious imbecilic assistant. The choice could change everything.
Tue, 18 Jul 2023 02:38:54 GMT
Description: When Glenn Sabine shows up backstage in response to the raucous noise from the prop closet, Pike Setter panics. What is he going to do when his boss discovers what he did to Juliet Jones?
Part 19: The noise that wakes the neighborhood
Wed, 12 Jul 2023 03:37:18 GMT
Description: While Glenn Sabine comforts Eve as she berates herself for doing poorly in the performance part of the pageant, they are both drawn to the noise of banging coming from the prop closet backstage.
Part 18: When it’s time to start a riot
Sat, 08 Jul 2023 02:26:20 GMT
Description: With the police officer who was guarding the prop closet door gone for the evening, Julie has decided to take matters into her own hands. Will the evil Pike Setter who is the official replacement watchman be able to stop her once she gets her riot on?
Fri, 30 Jun 2023 01:34:11 GMT
Description: Attempting to locate her sister, Eve calls the hotel and even the modeling agency as a last ditch effort before checking backstage where Pike Setter keeps watch over the prop closet.
Part 16: When it all goes awry
Tue, 20 Jun 2023 13:34:47 GMT
Description: Eve Jones struggles through her poetry reading and is mortified when it comes to a close. The audience, however, seems to have a different take on it. Will it be enough to sway the judges?
Part 15: Braver than all the Worthies in the world
Fri, 16 Jun 2023 01:27:32 GMT
Description: In front of a capacity crowd and millions of potential television viewers, Eve Jones falters in her poetry reading. That is when she remembers that it’s more important to remember the meaning rather than just words on a page. Will the judges see past her outward beauty, as the poem suggests, to her heart?
Part 14: Don’t bet money, honey
Tue, 06 Jun 2023 02:01:53 GMT
Description: When the contestant ahead of her falters in the talent competition, Eve’s fear of failure becomes a real, palpable thing. Will she be able to overcome her pre-contest jitters?
Part 13: The prop closet holding cell
Tue, 30 May 2023 04:23:49 GMT
Description: Instead of finding Glenn Sabine to tell him about his crooked partner on crime, Julie runs into the one person she had been trying to avoid in the first place. When a police officer ushers her into a prop closet, it might be curtains for Juliet Jones!
Part 12: The hysterical gate crasher
Sat, 20 May 2023 10:42:10 GMT
Description: Busted by the one person she was trying to avoid, Juliet Jones has nowhere to hide and nothing but her strong will to get to Glenn Sabine. But will it be enough to get past her nemesis and avoid his wrath a second time?
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 12.
She had been thwarted at the door by the security guard. She had been forced to squeeze through a bush of berries she couldn’t eat. She had climbed through an open window – effectively breaking and entering – just to get in to see Glenn Sabine and tell him the God-awful truth about Punk Setter. Sure, she had finally made it to her destination, but only to be stopped in her tracks by the one she had been trying to avoid in the first place. So it was perfectly understandable that this mayor of the little town of Devon had crossed the intersection of infuriated and vexed long before she had entered the backstage dressing rooms.
Stiffening like a raging bull at a hernia checkup, Julie scowled at Setter’s condescending teasing and jeering. He was still razzing her for sneaking into the pageant without a ticket. As if that was the reason why she was here!
“A kid of twelve, sure,” said Setter with the tone of an uncle babbling boo-boo to a little baby. “But a full-grown woman sneaking in!”
He was pinching the end of Julie’s nose and wiggling it gently. “Aren’t you ashamed, lady?”
Ashamed? More like the Titanic about to capsize, and take prisoners in its wake. More like a stick of dynamite that had been dropped in your drawers and was only seconds away from rearranging your plans for the evening.
“Let me through, Mr. Setter!” Julie bellowed in a voice that would have made Marine drill sergeants run and hide.
Setter was unfazed. He turned to the police officer at the other side of the room and whistled loudly. Setter beckoned with his finger for the cop to come. Apparently, he had all of his staff well-trained from canine obedience school.
The officer had been napping in a wooden chair that was angled back against the wall. His police cap was tipped over his face, and when he heard Setter’s whistle, the chair slipped off the wall and dropped to the floor with a crash, taking the officer with it. The officer scrambled to his feet and fitted his hat to his head, looking around to make sure no one saw his blunder before wandering over to the Pike.
“Officer,” Pike Setter said as the officer made his way over to him. “Take this hysterical gate-crasher, huh? Put her in cold storage until this shindig is in the records.”
Cold storage?! Julie was about to kick and scream, but realized that it was one thing to fight against Punk Setter. It was an entirely different set of screws and matches messing with the law. And technically, she had broken in. It was then that she realized she could have just bought a ticket like everyone else and gone in the front door.
The officer took her by the arm and led her away. Pike Setter was folding his arms and grinning proudly like a moron who had just solved a first-grade math equation at a Mensa contest.
Julie turned back to the officer. “You mustn’t listen to him,” she pleaded, trying to yank her arm away from his death grip.
“Now, now, Miss,” he said sympathetically. “I’ll find a nice quiet spot for you to pass the time in.”
Julie knew she had done it this time. Now she would not only miss her chance to talk to Glenn Sabine, but she also wouldn’t even be able to see her sister up on that stage, living her dream. Her little sister Eve who would be looking out into the audience for her big sister Julie, looking for that support, and finding no one.
Part 11: There’s always more than one way in
Sat, 13 May 2023 10:29:42 GMT
Description: Being the intellectually brilliant mayor that Juliet Jones is, she bewitches the security guard and discovers there’s more than one way to get into the theater. Question is: once inside, will she be able to get backstage and find Glenn Sabine?
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 11.
To the stereotypical security guard outside the backstage entrance to the theater, Juliet Jones was nothing more than a thorn on a rose that he had accidentally sat on. Sure, like a rose, she was beautiful and smelled nice, and truth be told, under slightly different circumstances, she would have probably made a perfect Mrs. Stereotypical Security Guard, but her presence was the thorn lodged in his rear that could only be removed by surgical extraction.
While he could easily stop her from entering the premises, he could not force her to stop staring at him from the phone booth a stone’s throw away. It was her gorgeous hazel eyes that bore into his skull, making him feel more than a tad bit guilty that he wouldn’t let her into the building to see the boss. She seemed innocent enough, had a plausible story that she needed to see her sister, but it was the cute ones you had to watch out for, he had to remind himself. One minute they were drawing you in with those kitten-like hazels, the next they were escorting you to dinner, ordering the finest beluga caviar, and excusing themselves to go powder their nose while leaving you to pick up the tab.
No, he would not let her in. In fact, he would not even look at her. That’s right. Why even look in her direction when all it got you was a one-way bus ride to Guilt City with a side trip to Loony Town? Instead, he would focus on… on… yes, that was it! The street worker ramming his jackhammer into the street like a bonobo on speed. He sighed. Oh forget it, he thought. Where were those hazel beauties that had captured his heart? He couldn’t tear himself away even for another second.
But when he brought his eyes back to find her, he was gobsmacked to discover that she had disappeared. Vanished, as if into thin air. Maybe, he thought, just maybe… she had been a figment of his imagination all along. And for one brief moment in time, his heart sank with disappointment. The loss. The betrayal. Gone. The thorn in his rear was gone, leaving only… a rose.
Around the corner of the backstage entrance, Juliet Jones was pressing her back against the brick wall out of sight. She looked left and right and was fully convinced that the stereotypical security guard who had been staring into space hadn’t seen her disappear. Behind her was a window that she had noticed was open a crack. Thankfully, it was still 1962 and most places were not yet equipped with electronic security devices that sprang when you went breaking and entering into public facilities.
While no one was watching, she lifted the window a little higher, a little higher, until there was enough room to squeeze in. No, maybe a little higher. She wasn’t quite sure how wide her hips had grown since coming to New York and surviving on sirloin steaks and frankfurters every night. Then she lifted herself up onto the window ledge and swung her leg up and over. She was almost inside, but her high heel somehow caught on a snag and she dropped clumsily into the building with a little shriek, tumbling into some kind of trash can and knocking it over with a crash that sounded like chimpanzees warming up cymbals and percussions for the New York Philharmonic.
Once inside, she found herself in a dark room that must have been some kind of storage closet. Following the light under the crack of the exit door, she pushed her way through what were probably costumes and made her way to the door. It was open. She glanced outside and when the coast was clear, she rushed down the hallway and found herself in the back of the auditorium with a clear view of the judges box. Now to get backstage and find Sabine.
Part 10: Ladies and gentlemen, Eve Jones!
Sat, 06 May 2023 08:13:20 GMT
Description: Lights, camera, action! The moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. It’s time for Eve Jones to step out on stage and fulfill all her Miss Teenager fantasies. But under the spotlight and in front of all the television cameras, can Eve keep herself from not smiling?
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 10.
While Julie was left high and dry outside the backstage entrance of the Miss Teenager pageant without a wing or a prayer, her sister was gearing up for the walk of her life. Each contestant had taken their turn promenading across the stage while making a dramatic spectacle of themselves in their “little bathing suit number,” as Julie had once called it.
Eve stood in the wings and chewed on her nails as she watched the other girls who were in line ahead of her strut their stuff under the spotlight. Each one that stepped out ahead of her was met with wild applause, hooting, and hollering. Although Eve couldn’t see the audience from where she stood, she knew that they were out there, somewhere. And the moment she walked out there, their eyes would be all over her like pickled relish on raw beef. And she was the beef. And they were the relish. Thing was, she loved relish. And she loved beef. But this was hardly the time to be salivating or reminiscing over barbecued hamburgers that Pops would cook in their backyard back in Devon. Oh, the relish he would lather on that beef. And oh, the beef.
That was how this whole shebang had started in the first place. She had been hanging out with Shorty and Deirdre, eating burgers and fries at the diner in town called “The Diner,” and wishing upon a shooting star that the teenage girl on the cover of Vogue who had won a beauty pageant could be her. Long story short, she soon found herself invited to a meeting with a handful of other teenage girls from Devon High standing on her high school stage in her best dress, and the judges had picked her. With that qualification, the highly-acclaimed title of Miss Devon, the unwavering support of her friends, and the will to succeed, she had applied for admittance into the national Miss Teenager pageant. Then Glenn Sabine had come to town and.. well, you know the rest.
The friend she had made at the contest, Paulina Ima Effin Sickles, was Miss Bluebury and she had won her title oddly the exact same way as Eve. Glenn Sabine had come to her hometown, too, with that creep Pike Setter.
In the wings, Paulina was just in front of her and when Glenn Sabine shouted Miss Paulina Effin Sickles, Eve gave her a little love tap for luck and accidentally shoved her off balance. Since Paulina was not used to the high heels that she was wearing, Eve’s push sent Paulina fighting to keep balance but losing the battle, falling headlong into a forward pitching face-plant onto the stage floor.
There was a gasp from the audience as Paulina went down hard. She wasn’t moving, lying on her stomach. A hush rolled over the audience like a wet blanket. Reporters of the event were already predicting she would never get up again. That was when she did. The audience rose to a standing ovation and she eventually made it across the stage, impressing the judges.
What a tough act to follow, Eve thought, as Paulina stumbled back into the wings and gave Eve a high five.
“And now,” Glenn Sabine happily announced, “Miss Eve Jones!”
Part 9: Something of vital interest
Sat, 29 Apr 2023 07:00:13 GMT
Description: With Glenn Sabine tied up on stage at the Miss Teenager pageant, Pike Setter reflects backstage on his life of imbecility and things he basically doesn’t regret. Meanwhile, from a pay phone in the alley next door, Julie tries to get through to someone who can relay her message to Glenn Sabine.
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 9.
It hadn’t actually escaped the attention of Glenn Sabine’s assistant that people had begun calling him Punk Setter behind his back. In fact, he very well knew he was a punk. Since his prepubescent teenage years, he was aware that there was something off in his own personality. His practical jokes often consisted of a kind of humor known only to the most ruthless of men, laughing at the weaker kids he bullied and going right along with the older classmates’ peer pressure to be the guy that dumped melted cheese over the poor weakling’s head.
That was just the way things were. It was then that he had started hanging out with the wrong crowd in the wrong neighborhood, kissing the wrong kinds of girls, eating the wrong kinds of foods, drinking the wrong kinds of drinks, and munching on the wrong kinds of midnight snacks. A so-called friend had introduced him to smoking and pretty soon just one smoke a day to soothe his inner hostility became three, then four, then a whole pack, and another, until stopping was something only chumps did.
Now look at him. He was ashamed even to look in the mirror, for he knew that if he did, he would have to face a man whose middle name was deceive-somebody-and-get-something-for-nothing. Just like he was doing with the Jones girl. Juliet. Even the name had a Shakespearean ring to it. The fact that she was a mayor did nothing but make him want her more. She was someone to conquer, and to conquer a dame who carried such an important title was proverbial icing on the proverbial cake. And he was all about proverbial anything.
Yes, the nickname punk suited him just fine, for that’s what he had become. All on his own. Whereas weak Glenn Sabine had come to the same realization and reformed his wicked ways, Punk Setter was just fine staying a punk. He would have his cake and eat it, too. Or have his mayor and… well, whatever he could get. He only needed to figure out a way to get back into her good graces, or more to the point, a way to subdue her into submission while dodging her wicked left hand.
He rubbed the left side of his face. He would never forget that left hand of hers that had come out of nowhere and made him literally see stars and bluebirds whirling around his head. Oh, yes, he would never forget. He was never one to let sleeping dogs just lie there. The next time he saw her would be payback.
Just then, his luck came full circle. As he stood backstage on his perpetual smoke break, staring into proverbial space, the sound of the person calling on the backstage phone sounded oddly familiar, as if a ghost of the distant past was creeping back into his life.
The backstage manager was yelling into the phone like the caller was dense and needed further explanation. “I said you can’t talk to Mr. Sabine,” he shouted, his left hand on the receiver and his right hand’s index finger plugged in his ear. “He’s on stage. But here’s his assistant.” Then he covered the speaker with his right hand and whispered at Pike. “Hey, Mr. Setter!”
Part 8: They are judged on talent, too!
Sat, 22 Apr 2023 11:22:05 GMT
Description: As Glenn Sabine hosts the Miss Teenager pageant, he reminds the audience that talent is just as much an important factor for the judges as the contestant’s appearance. Meanwhile, Julie must figure out how to use the pay phone with a hammer drill pounding in her ear.
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 8.
That evening at the Miss Teenager pageant, Glenn Sabine looked down from the stage at the swelling minority of immature gawking high schoolers and stoned university students from local areas around New York City and shook his head. They were hooting and hollering in jovial voices, sometimes whistling and shouting for the girls to come out on stage. Funny, he thought, how times change. A few weeks earlier, before he had gone legit, he himself would have been down there hooting it up right along side them. Ah, the good old days, he thought. At least the majority of the crowd seemed to be behaving themselves and acting with what some might consider “professional courtesy.”
When it came to the troublemakers, Sabine was just grateful for his security entourage that was allegedly safe-guarding the premises. Then there was his not-so-trusty assistant Punk Setter who must have been backstage wasting time again, either hanging out and chatting indecently with the ladies or perpetually on a smoke break. More likely the latter.
When it was time for the first contestant to strut out onto the stage in the bathing-suit presentation, there was such raucous applause that Sabine had to shout into the microphone.
“First,” he roared as Miss Baldwin City lit up the stage, “Miss Angela Uhlrick of Baldwin City!” Massive applause ensued.
“She’s 17,” he continued, “five feet, five inches tall.”
As she walked across the stage with perfect posture and a broad smile, he went on to share more seemingly inconsequential facts about her, such as her natural hair color, waist size in centimeters, whether or not she clipped her toe-nails, her home phone and social security number, and how many times per day, if at all, she flossed. Yes, he knew these were the details that all the audience members needed to know in order to understand each of the contestants and judge them beyond the superficial first glance as they teetered along the stage.
However, he felt it was also his solemn duty as MC to inform them that the judges were looking for more than just that. “Remember,” he shouted with a raised hand, “the judges are grading the contestants on beauty, poise, charm… and talent!”
Some guy in the front row cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted that he could clearly see her talent from where he was sitting and why they would have to bother with all the rest. Well, Glenn thought. It wouldn’t be much of a beauty pageant without the rest of the brouhaha, would it? But since it was already a set program, he didn’t feel obliged to interrupt the contest to answer the man’s otherwise insightful question. Instead, he winked at the man and gave him a quick finger-gun salute.
Meanwhile, outside the heavily-fortified backstage entrance, Julie had spent her last nickel at the pay phone trying to reach somebody on the inside to get in touch with Glenn Sabine.
“But I must talk to Mr. Sabine,” she said. “It’s extremely important.”
The man sounded bored. Like she had interrupted his game of tidily winks or caught him in a nap. He must have been munching on a snack or the free popcorn because between his language, the wailing ambulance sirens, and hammer drills working on the street right next to her, she had a hard time understanding if the man was even speaking English. He was saying something to the effect of Mr. Sabine being on stage and couldn’t talk right now but would she mind speaking with Mr. Sellemagum or something like that instead.
“Talk to whom instead?” she yelled.
Part 7: The unstoppable sister
Sat, 15 Apr 2023 09:24:21 GMT
Description: With Pike Setter in seemingly firm control over crushing Eve’s hopes of Miss Teenager triumph, Julie is on a mission to stop him by going straight to the source: his boss.
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 7.
Juliet Jones was a woman on a mission.
She could have stayed at the Hotel Star all day, drowning herself in one form of liquid beverage or another at the hotel bar scene, wallowing in self-pity and growing antagonism toward the man who had caused all this raucous in the first place. But that would have been way out of character for the conservative mayor of Devon.
She could have called the NYPD, but since the misdemeanor was hardly a blip on the law’s radar, she figured they would have laughed in her face. It was the 1960s, after all, and men like Pike Setter were still highly favored in he-said-she-said cases. Plus, he was the one with the claw marks on the face. Hardly the evidence in her favor.
No, if she had any hope of turning the situation around for herself and her sister, she had to do something drastic. She had to talk to Glenn Sabine in person. Up until this point, she had seen Sabine as the enemy and Pike as the hero, saving Eve’s reputation and the contest from Glenn’s imminent fraud. But after what had just occurred, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that maybe she had gotten it all wrong. Maybe it was the chain-smoking, fast-talking, deal-swindling Pike who had been the villain all along. The problem was, he currently appeared to be holding all the aces when it came to stopping Eve’s hopes and dreams of Miss Teenager triumph. But she had a plan.
For once she was grateful that another imbecilic cab driver had bent the throttle at pedal-to-the-metal speed to get her to the site of the Miss Teenager Contest in less than three minutes flat. Springing out of the cab and staggering in the street to get her balance, she rushed over to the back stage entrance of the theater.
“A man as mean and frustrated as Pike Setter,” Julie thought to herself as she ran, “could ruin Eve’s chances. Unless I get to Glenn Sabine first.”
And wouldn’t she know it? At the door labeled “Back Stage Door” in block letters stood a quintessential stereotypical security guard in full garb, donning even a little police hat that made him look almost important.
He held up his hand as she approached. “You got a special permit, lady?”
“No,” she panted, “I mean, I’m the sister of one of the contestants and…”
“We got strict orders,” he said. “No relatives permitted back stage. Sorry, miss.”
Julie was suddenly a powder keg ready to blow. If Pike Setter and his megalomaniacal ways were not nearly enough to dissuade her from giving in, some doorman in a swank security uniform wouldn’t even come close. She had already demonstrated her superior might in the use of the five-finger tiger claw across the cheek to Punk Setter. Now Joe Security was about to get a taste.
Rearing back like a brontosaurus in heat, she clenched her fists and shouted in a voice that even she did not recognize. “I’ve just got to get in there!”
Sat, 08 Apr 2023 08:24:34 GMT
Description: As Julie tortures herself with the guilt of throwing away the only chance her little sister had to win the Miss Teenager contest, Pike Setter drums up his own version of guilt, and Glenn Sabine steps up to the mic to begin the pageant. Bright Lights, Big Dreams, Part 6 Back in the Hotel Star, Juliet Jones was wallowing over the fact that Pike Setter had conned his way into her room and then shanghaied the innocence of this entire night. This was supposed to be all about Eve! This was Eve’s moment in the spotlight, to prove to everybody that was anybody that she was somebody! Of course, as her older sister who loved her, Julie had always believed her sister was the biggest somebody with the biggest heart of any sister that ever lived. She had never doubted her, not even for a second. Okay, so there might have been brief moments of hesitation, such as when Julie thought that Eve had made a bad decision sending in photos of herself in a bikini to participate in a fishy Miss Teenager Contest, or when she had paid good money to hire crooked Glenn Sabine to be some kind of acting coach, or when she had decided to come to New York to chase an impossible dream that only happens to girls with big money, big hair, and even bigger egos. Oh, who was she kidding? She had doubted her little sister from the get-go. If only she had been a little bit more supportive. If only she had just brought her potential-boyfriend-cop Eddie Hearn with her to New York to protect her against the mean, lean, alligator-green Punk Setter and his conniving little schemes, she would have paved the way for Eve to have at least a fair shot at this Miss Teenager pageant, which Julie didn’t even believe was legit up until a few hours ago. Now Pike was threatening to ruin everything for Eve, and it was all her fault! Still all dressed up for the big night, Julie covered her face in her hands. “What a dandy little fixer-upper I turned out to be!” she wailed. Meanwhile, in the taxi on the way to the contest, Pike Setter was doing some pity-partying self-sulking of his own. He was still rubbing the bruises on the left side of his face from the five-finger claw attack that the mayor of Devon had unleashed in all her fury. At least that was his side of things. And speaking of side of things, he was still rubbing the wrong side of his face. Julie had smacked him on the right cheek. Sucking down his umpteenth cigarette of the evening, he leaned against his hand and complained to the closest person who would understand, the man whom Pike had only met a second ago, but it had felt like he’d known him for weeks, maybe even decades. The cab driver. That was a man he could confide in. “Dames!” he spat, his saliva reaching the front seat and splattering on the cab driver’s shoulder unnoticed. “When they’re not being stupid, they’re being stubborn.” Of course, by “stupid and stubborn dames,” he was specifically referring to basically anyone outside his immediate family. His mother and sister had been exempt from his misogynistic stereotypes years ago. The cabbie turned his head and Pike noticed that the man was also smoking. Now that was another reason he could confide in the man. They both had something deadly in common. “Go figger them out,” the cabbie gargled, “it don’t pay to even try, buddy.” Yeah, Pike thought. It sure don’t pay to try. It don’t even pay to get your grammar right either. You try and you get yourself a good whack to the side of the face like a hammer blow. That was the way it was when it came to dames, grammar rules, and a whole bunch of other examples he couldn’t think of at the moment. Oh, how did he ever stumble upon the world’s wisest cab driver?
Sat, 08 Apr 2023 08:00:19 GMT
Description: A new character enters the story in the form of Dollar Wallopston, a burned-out anchorman for General Television, who feels that he has been cheated out of anything that has ever meant anything in his life by being forced to cover this dumb-ass Miss Teenager Contest.
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 5.
It was the night of the Miss Teenager pageant finals. Dollar Wallopston was nervous. He was the anchor for General Television evening news, the generic television station that didn’t even get an assigned channel. There was Channel 3 News at 5. Channel 4 News and Weather at 6. Channel 7 News at 8. Channel 9 in Spanish. Then there was General Television. He was tired of being the general anchor for that general news station, collecting a general paycheck for a generally modest salary. He was better than this. In his own humble opinion, if he was general at all, he was a general in the army of journalism everywhere. Not just in New York, no, but in Paris, too. Who cares if he had never been to Paris? Never even been to Tokyo either. Did that matter when it came to who was the best in the business? No, siree.
For his temper tantrum about losing the assignment to cover the Yankees playoff bid, he had been assigned to the Miss Teenager contest like purgatory for news anchors. Who in the world had even heard of a Miss Teenager beauty pageant, anyway, he thought? Well, after tonight, the whole world was going to hear about it. He and his camera crew would make sure of that. He had been given one shot to get it right or get thrown out onto his general bottom behind the general store in the general alley with all the other general winos. Well, that was just not going to happen. Not tonight.
His street interviews with people coming to the show and buying tickets out front didn’t help all that much. He would ask general questions like why are you here. They would always answer the same thing. Cute girls. Cheap tickets. Free popcorn. When he asked if there was a girl representing Manhattan or Brooklyn, a local favorite, no one knew or cared. Wait a minute, he thought. This was the finals! When the heck was the first and second round? Why hadn’t he been informed of this?
He came back to the van in a huff and threw his microphone down like a stick on a campfire. “How much time?” he blasted at his cameraman.
“About thirty minutes,” Bob replied annoyed. “Everything’s set.”
Dollar ran his hands though his grease-backed hair and exhaled hard. He was going to have to get a grip on his attitude starting now. This was his last chance, and he needed his team. He apologized to Bob and made his commitment to doing better. Bob nodded admiringly, thoroughly impressed. They high-fived. It was time to go to work.
Meanwhile, inside the theater backstage, Glenn Sabine was sweating bullets. For some reason, the bow tie he had ordered with the rented tux was three sizes too small. He was going to be on general television, for goodness sake, he couldn’t walk out there with a tuxedo and no tie! They’d laugh him off the stage!
As he was adjusting the tie, he was coaching the entire group of girls who were dressed in their bathing suits for the opening number and the ribbon of their hometown wrapped from shoulder to waist.
“The judges won’t give their final choice until the very end, so….” he said, choking from his tight tie. Then it was loose again. He got it! “…keep punching until the last event. Any questions?”
“Y-yes,” Eve Jones asked. “Is there a doctor in the house?”
The other girls chuckled. Very funny, Eve, Glenn thought. He had coached them for weeks on everything they needed to know, everything they needed to do. It was a walk in the park for all of them. So why were they all so nervous? Why was he? Oh, he knew why. This damn tie!
No matter what, he thought, tie or no tie, it was time to go to work.
Part 4: Conquering the aggressive type
Tue, 02 Aug 2022 04:59:33 GMT
Description: With Pike Setter's aggression quelled by a good swift slap to the face, Julie has him against the ropes, but Pike is not done yet. Her counter-attack only wakes up a sleeping tiger. Will his threats have any merit, or is Pike just a big bag of hot air?
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 4.
The heart of Juliet Jones was hammering with fear mixed with adrenaline as sweat formed on her brow. After Pike Setter’s aggressive kiss-and-tell-me-you-love-me routine, Julie had shown him the road to back-off-and-stay-off with a good swift slap to the face that literally rocked his world.
Turning her shoulder to face him sideways in a self-defense posture, Julie was ready for Pike to come back for seconds. True to form, the arrogant oaf clenched his right fist as he rubbed the side of his face to soothe his cheek. Julie had always known the man wasn’t very bright, but maybe that blow had knocked out a bulb in the attic. Pike was rubbing the wrong side of his face!
As she expected, he was all dragon smoke and no fire, only threats and no action.
“I ought to…” he began.
“You ought to clear out of here, Mr. Setter,” Julie shot back with the boldness that strips a man of confidence. “You’re about one move from the police right now.”
Pike was silent, speechless at the fact that all his cards had been called. There were three things no one had ever beaten him at: poker, smoking, and brawling. He just never expected his toughest opponent to be a dame. And by goodness, he would be a monkey’s uncle if he wasn’t the world’s greatest sore loser.
He turned to the door, his face beet red. Juliet waited. He paused there, gathering his thoughts. Then he spun his head back and grimaced a malicious look that could have ripped the varnish off paint.
“I’m a vengeful type, Miss Jones,” he growled. “And things like five fingers across my cheek make me real mean.”
Pike stepped out of the room and slammed the door so hard that the room shook like it was a mobile home on stilts. Julie flinched at the sound.
Pike yelled back like he was cupping his mouth and pressing it against the door. “If that dizzy kid sister ever had a chance to get herself crowned Miss Teenager,” he bellowed, “you fixed it good for her! She’s a sure loser!”
He followed up his message with a single fist pound on the door and then took his leave.
After locking the door, Julie held her hands together and shivered in worry. Had she really ruined Eve’s chances at winning the contest? If anyone was almost as influential as Glenn Sabine himself, and had the authority to sway the contest in favor of a particular contestant, it was Pike.
Oh no, Juliet Jones, she thought, what have you done now?
Thu, 28 Jul 2022 05:41:47 GMT
Description: Out of options without a safety net, Julie finds herself in hot water with Pike Setter making the moves on her without consent. Drawing from her experience and background in self defense, Julie lets Pike know who the mayor of the room is.
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 3.
So it had all been leading up to this moment. Julie kicked herself for not having seen the clues since Pike began pursuing her like a savage wolf on the hunt. In broad daylight, the creepy snake with the abhorrent ten-pack-a-day smoking habit and peculiar head-nod had been planning, baiting, and luring her in from square one.
Now he was about to find out what happened when you crossed a female mayor in the 1960s. And not just any female mayor. This was Juliet Jones. She was not best friends with Officer Eddie Hearn for nothing. After a mugger had held her at knife-point late one night when she was leaving her office, Eddie began teaching Julie self-defense techniques at the local gymnasium. Simple punching, kicking, and judo throws were used to defend against an array of assaults, and Julie slowly gained confidence, eventually overcoming her fear of going out alone at night, even though she rarely did anymore.
Fast-forward to New York City and the Miss Teenager pageant. Pike had crossed the “appropriate” line soon after he had entered her room. Now Julie realized it was wrong to have let him come up. Her previous instincts about him had been correct. He was someone to watch out for. But this was the night of the contest! They had seemingly become good friends. She was just beginning to trust the creep.
Now that he had entered her personal space uninvited and even aggressively, fear clutched at Julie’s heart.
“Pike,” she cried. “Let me go!”
“Stop playing hard to get, sister!” he murmured as his mouth crushed to hers in a kiss that rivaled smooching a bonobo in mating season.
Suddenly fear yielded to anger. Everything Eddie had taught her came rushing back. Taking him by surprise, she swung her arms up, knocking his arms away to the side.
“I am not…” Julie began.
Her next move was a full frontal shove, slamming him with a double-palm strike to the shoulders that backed him up a foot, almost dropping him to the ground.
Pike stumbled and shook his head, dazed.
“Playing!” she cried.
Before he could recover, he never even saw her left hand coming. It smacked flat against his cheek in a slap that rocked his head left.
Julie’s heart was thumping through her chest, her pulse racing madly. She stood there ready for a counter. Ready to fight. She could not lose.
Part 2: The end of the innocent act
Tue, 26 Jul 2022 02:58:38 GMT
Description: Pike Setter has lost all patience with Julie hedging his advances, but Julie only wants to know whether her sister is in trouble. With Pike lifting the curtain from his act of innocence, Julie is finally about to see him for all he's worth.
Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 2.
Julie should have seen this coming. Her first clue was that Pike didn’t have a cigarette in his lips. That should have tipped her off right there, but apart from the obvious, there was a long list of cues that she had missed. Maybe it went all the way back to their train ride from Devon, when he had conveniently sat next to her and tried to place his hand on her thigh. Then when he had first approached her at the Hotel Star, he was playing the role of Sir Galahad on Eve’s behalf, but later claimed that he was doing it all for Julie.
After the cab driver had taken them on a rollercoaster ride through the streets of Manhattan, leaving Julie dazed and bewildered, he had asked to “see more of her,” almost forcing Julie to say yes just to get him away from her. Trying to shake him off, Julie had depended on going out with Eve that night, but Eve had been called to an “emergency” meeting. Julie wondered if Pike had set up the whole thing to lure her out. Then when they’d gone out to dinner, he ordered up lobster, clams, unlimited dinner rolls, and the most expensive wine on the menu and finally made Julie pay for it all at the end of the evening, claiming he had “forgotten” his wallet back at the hotel.
She knew he was losing his patience with her hedging his advances, but before tonight, for Eve’s sake, Julie had thought she could stave him off until the pageant ended and they could go their separate ways. Beyond his frightening head-nod and goofy stare, she was actually beginning to like him, to tell herself that okay, her wasn’t her 10 – maybe more like a 2 – but beneath the smoke and haze that continually surrounded him and stuck to his clothes, he could have been worse. Admittedly, his tuxedo get-up may have upped him to a 3.
But tonight, he let the curtain fall on his act of innocence. Tonight Julie would find out all she would ever need or want to know about Pike Setter.
Like a circus clown with no one else to bother, Pike was suddenly up in her face. “O.K., you like me,” he said, repeating what Julie had just told him. “Like me because I saved your little sister’s bacon, or because of my domineering personality?”
At first, Julie still didn’t get what he was driving at. The pageant started in less than an hour. Both of them needed to get to the contest as soon as possible, unless something had gone wrong. Pike had come up, claiming something was wrong.
“I told you before,” Julie said, “I’m grateful to you…”
Before she could react, Pike had rushed through her defenses faster than a hunter in the wild. With his left arm, he clutched her waist to his, and with his right hand, he tipped her head back at the neck.
“Then show it!” he said, his smoke-breath like a dragon over her mouth, not wanting only to kiss but to conquer.
Fear tore through Julie’s veins. “Pike!” she shouted. “Stop!”
“You stop,” he replied, pressing his lips hard to hers. “Can’t kiss a woman who chatters.”
Part 1: Pretty little angel eyes
Thu, 21 Jul 2022 03:07:09 GMT
Description: As Season Three opens on the night of the Miss Teenager pageant, Pike comes to see Julie at the Hotel Star about "something urgent." Worried that it might be about Eve, Julie lets him into her hotel room. That is when Pike lowers the boom with his "urgent" question.
Season Three. Bright Lights, Big Dreams. PART 1.
It was the night of the Miss Teenager pageant, and the entire city was astir with excitement. Well, maybe not the entire city. It may have been much less than .001% of the population of the city that was astir, but then again, most New Yorkers didn’t stay astir for too long before moving on to the next big thing that stirred their excitement. Yet today was that day for Eve, and Julie couldn’t have been prouder of her sister.
As she dabbed on setting powder with a brush over her cheeks in the bathroom mirror at the Hotel Star, the tune of Pretty Little Angel Eyes came on the radio from the living room. Shaking her backside in rhythm with the doo-wop song, she brushed her chin, cheeks, and eyes with the makeup brush and sang softly along with the lyrics. As she stared into her eyes in the mirror, she imagined a man one day singing the words to her. I know you were sent from heaven above to fill my life with your wonderful love, I know we’ll be happy for eternity…
As the next part of the song came up, Julie used her brush as a microphone and sang the rest of it, ’cause know whoa whoa whoa that our love is really reaaaal….. When Curtis Lee sang the notes of “really real”, Julie copied his change of vocals and sang high soprano. For today was a day for singing high soprano. Her baby sister had always dreamed of this moment, her moment in the spotlight that she had imagined with her Barbies at six years old, and tonight it was finally here. How could Julie not support her sister now? Why hadn’t she always?
After the song finished, she heard the phone ringing by the bed. Had it been ringing nonstop while the song was playing? She rushed into the living room and grabbed the phone from its cradle. Just as she said a half-hello, in her haste, the receiver slipped off her shoulder and tumbled to the floor. She sighed impatiently, bent over and snatched the receiver, lifting it to her ear and saying hello.
“Julie, this is Pike,” he said. There was the noise of a crowded scene in the background. It didn’t sound like he was at the pageant. Maybe in the lobby downstairs? But why? As the assistant to the host of the pageant, wasn’t he needed there?
“Got to see you in a rush,” he said urgently. “And in private. Very crucial.”
Before tonight, she wouldn’t have allowed him to come up to her room, but now seemed safe enough. Besides, he had important and urgent news. Must be about Eve.
A few minutes later, she opened the door and saw him standing there in the hallway, acting very un-urgent, relaxed with his hands in his pockets, obviously filling the hallway with thick second-hand smoke. She had to admit that he looked dashing in his tuxedo and his hair was actually combed. He even wore a corsage on his lapel.
“Something go wrong?” Julie asked innocently enough.
“Maybe,” he muttered with a slight tone of worry.
She let him into the room and he was fidgeting, glancing around the room as if he were a spy, like he was checking his tracks. Julie thought he was being cute, acting all nervous for the pageant’s big night. She softened and was just about to tell him to loosen up when he got right to the point.
“Julie,” he said, “do you like me? I mean, real-like, not polite-like.”
Read the rest of the original audio script at the blog post.
Part 33: The dream has arrived
Tue, 12 Jul 2022 05:45:44 GMT
Description: In the last episode of Season Two, Eve is on the cusp of her dream becoming a reality, competing in the national beauty pageant for teenage girls, while a personal dream for Glenn Sabine is also about to unfold, leaving his life of crime and becoming the famous host of the pageant. It all begins tonight!
Eve Goes to New York. PART 33. The Finale of Season Two.
Back at the theater on the corner of Broadway and 7th, Glenn Sabine was defying all the rules. Like his imbecilic partner in crime, Pike Setter, he had decided long ago that “No Smoking” signs were for chumps. In fact, while the girls were backstage getting their hairstyle arrangements and makeup all set for the night of the big show, “somebody” who wished to remain nameless, namely Glenn Sabine, was shaking his can of spray paint and crossing out the SM on the “No Smoking” sign and replacing it with a J.
Therefore, he felt zero percent remorse inhaling from his corn-cob pipe while he addressed the Miss Teenager contestants who stood side-by-side on the stage watching him attentively. It was the end of a long evening of walking them through all the steps they would need to keep in mind for the contest tomorrow night. Glenn’s feet were killing him from sitting down and watching the girls walk back and forth across the stage for hours.
“Attitude and poise will be extremely important, girls,” he said through the pipe lodged in his teeth, giving his final instructions before they could call it a night. “So I want you all to go home and get a restful night’s sleep.”
There was a stir among the girls whose nerves were already feeling the pressure. Eve was biting her nails. “Sleep!” she scoffed.
“Is he kidding?” said Paulina Ima Effin Sickles. Did it suddenly slip his mind, she wondered, that going “home” for them meant traveling miles away and that they were all holed up at different hotels in the city? What the heck was he thinking?
“And may the best Miss Teenager win!” he added with an uncharacteristic grin. If this shebang went off as he hoped, all of Glenn Sabine’s dreams of hosting stardom would come true. His life of crime would finally be locked up in the past, for good.
The next evening was the night of the pageant. Eve had hardly thought of anything else all day. Although she hadn’t had more than four hours of decent shut-eye, she had gulped down more cups of coffee than she could remember, so she was as wired as a nuclear generator operating at full power. She could literally feel beams of light shooting out of her hair, and if her heart had something to say about it, she’d be flapping around the room like a caged bird set free.
In the hotel room at the Star, she and Julie were all dressed up in evening gowns for the big show. Eve lifted the hem of her dress and sighed heavily as her sister watched her with glowing pride.
“Tell me how I look,” Eve said, “after I stop shaking.”
“Terrific,” Julie replied with such pride that she was on the verge of tears. “Shakes and all.”
They hugged each other tightly and tears trickled out of Eve’s eyes. This was a big night for both of them.
Read the complete audio script on the blog post for this story.
Tue, 05 Jul 2022 04:08:46 GMT
Description: With her heart thumping out of control, Julie reels from her insane escapades around the city with Pike Setter, wondering if hanging out with the smoke-inhaling slob is entirely worth it. Will her efforts to help Eve pay off?
Eve Goes to New York. PART 32.
By the time the cab had careened to a screeching halt in front of the Hotel Star, the rain still hadn’t let up. Julie couldn’t believe the odds of getting the exact same cab driver take them back, the same one who had taken them on a wild goose chase through the squall on their way to the museum. The return voyage through the rough seas of the waterlogged streets of Manhattan was just as rugged as the first trip. There was nary a paddle nor a rudder to keep their vehicle from splish-slashing and taking a bath all over the city streets. The driver was caw-cawing like he was watching Jackie Gleason and swinging the wheel left and right, with Julie and Pike thrown in whichever direction he was steering.
The cabbie with wide eyes and a psychotic grin had even hopped curbs, barreled right through parking meters, knocked over hot dog stands, and made mothers scream and yank their strollers out of the way. It looked to Julie like the man had deliberately been trying to hit them, playing a game of target practice with himself. When Julie glanced over at Pike to wonder if he had seen what she had, she saw him asleep with his head leaning against the window and his mouth wide open, snoring with his cigarette hanging off his bottom lip like it was glued there.
When the cab finally stopped, Julie exhaled heavily and got her thumping heartbeat back under control, while Pike was yawning and stretching his arms out past Julie’s face like he’d just woken up from an afternoon nap in the summer sun. He stepped out of the vehicle first into the busy side of traffic, holding the door for Julie while he got drenched in the pouring rain. Once again, his cigarette was completely dry.
Julie stepped out on his side into the downpour.
Pike spoke with a louder voice over the rain and the honking of horns and busyness of the city street. “The Miss Teenager finals start tomorrow,” he shouted to Julie as she stepped out. “I’ll keep Glenn in line, and will I see you tonight?”
“If Eve doesn’t need me,” Julie replied with politeness, knowing that she and Eve had made dinner plans, the perfect excuse to rebuff Pike’s invitation and his incessant romantic advances.
“She won’t,” he said, cock sure of himself as he inhaled smoke from his miraculously dry cigarette. “Pick you up about seven.”
Julie gave a him weak grin as the rain deluged her in sheets. As Pike sat back down in the cab, he winked at Julie with a single finger-gun salute and slammed the door. The cab’s tires spun like mad, spitting up rain water and tearing into the asphalt beneath. Then it was off to the races.
It was, of course, at this time that the concierge had shown up and held an umbrella over Julie’s soaked head, offering to walk her to the entrance only two feet away. Julie stared at him like where the heck was he five minutes ago, but she assumed he had been busy, so she politely refused his help and walked through the revolving glass doors herself.
At least her plans with Eve would keep her from having to see Pike again that night. When she stepped into their room, however, Eve was nowhere to be seen. A note was sitting on the desk. Julie recognized Eve’s cute cursive handwriting with wide-looped letters. When she read it, her heart sank.
Part 31: A reward of affection
Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:41:34 GMT
Description: Pike Setter has just laid all his cards on the table. He has really been doing all of this not to be a nice guy, or to help Eve in any sense of the word, but to impress Julie. Will his heroic act warrant a reward for his efforts, or will he crash and burn?
Eve Goes to New York. PART 31.
So that was it. Julie should have known. She should have expected this. Pike had laid out all his cards on the table and the result was a full flush, full of flushing endearment. It was not the kindness shown to Eve for getting Sabine to make the Miss Teenager pageant legit, but rather a coy manipulative trick perhaps to get something from Julie. Or was it? Julie was always second-guessing everyone’s affections and not trusting anyone.
That one quality had both advantages and drawbacks. The advantage was self-defense and avoiding any mishaps or heartbreaks that she had known well from experience in her 20s. The drawback was simple: she would never get close to anyone. Wasn’t that what was keeping her from developing the kind of intimacy that led to first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Julie with a baby carriage? She thought of Eddie back in Devon. He had always doted over her, but besides a flirtatious wink or gesture, or an occasional date once in while, Julie had never given him the satisfaction of committing to be his girlfriend. How long would it be until she dropped her guard and allowed her heart to have feelings for guys like Pike? Was she going to use this self-protection strategy forever, she wondered?
Before she could clear her thoughts, Pike had flicked his finished cigarette butt at a statue and moved into her personal space, like a soldier that treaded underwater through enemy lines. She gasped when she realized she was staring into his eyes only several inches away.
“I went to bat for Eve because of you, Julie,” he reiterated. “I risked my job, such as it is, for maybe a gesture of affection?” His hands brushed softly over her shoulders.
Like a speeding race car in the distance that you don’t see coming until the last minute, Pike was moving fast. Perhaps a little too fast for Julie’s taste.
“I… I’m grateful, Pike…” Julie muttered, not knowing where to go from here, knowing she barely had seconds before his lips found hers.
Quickly, she turned her back to him and casually glanced at the historical displays behind glass that hung on the wall.
She almost jumped a mile when she heard his voice over her left shoulder. “Lots of things start with gratitude,” he said with a gentle voice in Julie’s ear, followed by cigarette breath that made her want to gag.
She turned to a statue, any statue, she didn’t care, and brushed dust off its shoulder. “Isn’t this interesting?” she said, trying her best to sound interested when her nerves were crying out for a powder break.
“Fascinating,” was Pike’s unemotional reply, acknowledging defeat. His countenance fell. His shoulders drooped. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets like a whiny little two-year-old, realizing that his attempt to receive his reward of affection had failed.
“Keep an open mind on me, Julie,” he said. “I don’t give up easy.”
That was exactly what had Julie worried.
Tue, 28 Jun 2022 02:56:01 GMT
Description: After enduring an adventurous cab ride across the city in a downpour, Pike and Julie arrive at a safe place to "talk" away from the watchful tyrannical eyes of Glenn Sabine. Will the news that Pike has about his boss be worth the wait?
Eve Goes to New York. PART 30.
Why was it that everywhere Juliet Jones went, crazy followed? Maybe it was just a New York thing. It started in the cab on the way to the Museum of Natural History, the latest destination on the Pike Setter trail of baloney where he claimed that it was better to meet in a private place far from the watchful eyes of his allegedly tyrannical boss. The rain was coming down so hard that Julie was certain that at any moment, they’d exit the vehicle in the middle of a river with a rescue boat waiting for them, only to discover that the river was not a river at all but just a flooded-version of 34th Street, or wherever the heck they were.
If the cab were a boat, the driver would have been the speedboat captain! Sloshing to his left and right, whizzing around cars and trucks in his path, he held the steering wheel with his right hand on top and his head down in attack-mode. He had a grin of insanity plastered on his face and his mouth half-open like he was enjoying the speed his cab was reaching, flying through the downpour, racing over waterlogged potholes and puddles like a bat out of hell. Julie clung to the door handle for dear life. With every sharp lane change, the cab tossed Julie and Pike in that direction and a huge puddle of water washed over the windows like they were on the inside of a car wash. Finally, they came to a skidding halt outside the museum but had to walk almost a block to the entrance because in the cab driver’s haste, he had braked and sailed clear past the entrance, fish-tailing and swinging the wheel left and right to get it back under control.
As she exited the vehicle into the pouring rain, she stumbled and would have dropped to the pavement if Pike hadn’t reached out and grabbed her arm. While the rain pelted her, she put a hand on her head that was reeling like she had stars spinning around her head like in the cartoons. She waited for him to produce the big golf umbrella that would have been suitable for two, but he had nothing of the sort. Why wasn’t she surprised? Together they ran through the rain. Pike held her close with his arm around her as they rushed up the museum steps to avoid getting even more soaked than they were.
Why were they even at the museum? Couldn’t they have found a quiet place somewhere closer to the hotel, especially in this weather? She asked him as much.
“It’s a sure bet that this museum is probably the last place in the world you’d find Glenn Sabine,” Pike explained. “Besides, it’s quiet and dry in its distinctly medieval interior.”
After two hours of looking at exhibits in several of the museum’s exhibition halls, Julie had had about enough waiting.
She turned to Pike, who hadn’t said a word since they’d entered the museum. “Well?”
The sign directly in front of them with big wide full-color paint that said, “No Smoking in the Museum.” Another sign right next to it said, “Just in Case You Missed Our First Sign, We Strongly Suggest You Go Back And Read Where It Says No Smoking Under Any Circumstances in the Museum.” And yet another sign, “Violators Will Be Prosecuted Up To 150 Days in Jail.”
In typical James Dean fashion, Pike was brazenly ignoring them all.
Part 29: Going somewhere, Miss Jones?
Wed, 22 Jun 2022 01:36:57 GMT
Description: While Eve strikes poses in front of the mirror and hams it up with her pretend boyfriend, Julie mentally prepares herself for another afternoon on the town with the whistle-blowing informant known as Pike Setter.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 29.
Back at the Hotel Star, Eve spun around in front of the closet door mirror for another hour and a half in a beautiful silver and steel-blue evening gown. It was just like posing for photos – a lean here, a sway there, a dainty touch to the cheek, a smile… A week had passed since she had arrived in New York City, and she was already starting to feel like a superstar.
While Julie was getting dressed for an afternoon on the town, Eve gave herself some positive self-talk that sounded more like a private conversation with a pretend boyfriend: Oh, you really think so? You don’t think it’s too long? My, you are full of compliments. Thank you so much! I think the glint of the silver satin fabric in the hem looks fabulous, don’t you? You do, too? I love the way you gush over me. Don’t stop, but please tell me the truth. Oh, well, I wouldn’t go that far. I admit, it is one of the best gowns that I have, but the word “princess”…
Julie was buttoning up her jacket and watching Eve from across the room, stifling a smirk, eavesdropping on Eve’s conversation with her fake boyfriend. She was Eve’s-dropping.
Eve caught Julie watching her out of the corner of her eye. “For the finale, we appear in evening gowns,” she explained to Julie as she watched herself in the mirror, striking poses. “All we do is smile and curtsey, maybe blow a couple of discreet kisses, Mr. Sabine says.”
Julie heard what Eve said, but her mind slipped back into date-mode with Pike Setter. Reluctantly, she was beginning to call them “dates,” but they were simply meetings that he had arranged to “discuss” how to deal with phony Glenn Sabine and his racketeering job called the Miss Teenager contest. Pike had ideas of his own, and Julie was willing to listen, if only to protect her little sister from imminent disappointment. There was always that warning in the back of her mind, clanging like a church bell on a steeple and waking her up to the fact that this whole operation led by Sabine and Setter was on stilts and could crumble at any moment, taking Eve’s heart with them. So to keep that from happening, Julie knew that it was best to keep informed, to stay in the know, and Pike Setter was the only link for her to do that.
As the night of the pageant approached, Julie was becoming more impatient for a solution, and she was sick and tired of being dragged all over the city just to meet Pike in a “private” location, far from the prying eyes and ears of his allegedly devious employer.
As Julie reached for the door handle to leave, Eve spotted her reflection in the mirror. “It’s pouring, Julie,” Eve exclaimed. “Where are you going?”
“Business appointment, Eve,” Julie replied, not exactly lying. “Be back in time for dinner.”
It was indeed raining cats and dogs as she exited the hotel into the chaos of the city streets. The sounds of car horns, rushing automobiles, shouting obscenities, and heavy rain flooded her ears. By the curb, she noticed a cab waiting and Pike stepped out of the back when he saw her exit the building. A kind concierge appeared out of nowhere, startling Julie at first, but then put her at ease by holding an umbrella over her head and escorting her through the pouring rain to the taxi.
Part 28: All eggs in one basket
Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:41:48 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine doesn't do well under pressure. He throws tantrums and clipboards when he's especially anxious, like today as he waits on result of his assistant Pike Setter's amateur attempt at placating the dangerous Juliet Jones.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 28.
All the next morning, Glenn Sabine was not himself. He was stomping around backstage, carrying a clipboard like somebody important, shouting to nobody in particular that the owners of the theater needed to get that carpet fixed and make sure the lighting and microphones worked on opening night. And oh, if they could fix those holes in the leaky roof that splattered like a broken fire alarm when the heavy rains came, that’d be great! And while they were at it, they could fix him up a sandwich and get him the ignoramus caterer on the horn who kept sending them carrot sticks and stale over-salted pretzels instead of a decent breakfast.
In a fit, he slammed his clipboard down because nobody was paying any attention to him. How come he could never afford a secretary so that he could have someone to blame? How come he could never afford anything except the donkey that he rode in on?
And speaking of asses (assistants, that is), where the freak was Pike Setter?!
Glenn’s blood pressure was through the roof. His sinuses were acting up. Quickly, he popped a few more pills – dry without water – from the medicine bottle he’d found on the street labeled “Tylenol.” Any given Miss Teenager contestant would have thought he’d lost his mind, rattling off inconsequential mumblings that meant nothing to nobody but him, yet none of the girls even noticed or cared. In Glenn’s opinion, they were all enjoying themselves way too much, like some day-camp for girls at the Y, socializing and cackling up a storm like they were preparing for a slumber party rather than a serious beauty pageant.
Okay, so maybe he was a tad bit anxious, waiting for the report from Pike on the status of Juliet Jones. Everything was riding on it! All his proverbial eggs were in one proverbial basket! If Pike had somehow used his dimwitted noggin for something other than poker and buying cigarettes, and made sure that Juliet Jones was effectively out of his hair, the man would deserve a raise. Well, Glenn was feeling out of his mind, but he wasn’t insane. A raise for anyone was out of the question.
All the girls were standing on stage and he was in the front, ready to address them and give them instructions for the rehearsal, when he smelled Pike Setter coming down the center aisle of the theater.
“Excuse me, girls,” he said to the girls, excusing himself.
He turned to the theater and saw Pike splashing rainwater off of his hat.
“Pike?” Glenn asked.
“Yeah, Glenn.”
Glenn trotted over to him and waited… and waited… and… oh my goodness, would this man ever get right to the point without the blasé disposition? Glenn was about to explode in anticipation. It was the single most important thing on his mind! That and wondering how the rain was able to drench Pike Setter’s entire body while keeping his cigarette perfectly dry.
“Well?” he blurted out.
As Pike pulled off his trench coat with the speed of a snail at a horse race, he spoke through his cigarette haze. “Juliet Jones seems momentarily placated,” he stated. “You can stop fretting, Glenn.”
Part 27: The conscience that brings the criminal home
Wed, 08 Jun 2022 02:15:48 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine's splitting headache could be his conscience sending his brain a wake-up call. With his worries over Juliet Jones blowing the whistle on the whole shebang, he wonders if his way out of a life of crime is to go legit.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 27.
The problem with Glenn Sabine was that no one had ever told him that telling a fib was really all that bad. His father was a traveling salesman who was rarely ever around and his mother was stuck at home taking care of the other fifteen siblings in his family, of which Glenn was lost somewhere in the middle.
Once in elementary school, when the teacher had asked Glenn to watch all of the classmates’ packed lunches while everybody got ready for a field trip, he had stolen a couple of snacks from a few backpacks and put them into his own. No one had noticed anything until later when they were all eating at the picnic site and Jay Lemon said that his lemon pudding was missing. There was Glenn, munching on it with a spoon, happy as a clam. Jay claimed that it was his, and Glenn just said that his mother must have given him the exact same one. Jay walked away sulking but accepted that excuse as plausible, even if his name did coincidentally match the flavor of the pudding. The same thing happened with Suzie Barbecue Sauce and her barbecue-sauce-flavored potato chips, and she had accepted the same lie.
...
Now he was faced with the ultimate challenge of his life, a woman who could see right through his bull shot routine: Mayor Juliet Jones.
Back stage at the Miss Teenager contest venue, Sabine twitched his button nose and chewed on his corncob pipe. He had been pacing the creaky wooden floor when he saw the black cat cross his path in the form of Eve Jones.
“Your sister,” he said, turning to her and holding his pipe, “she have lots of friends in official positions, like ah…. the police, that sort of thing?”
“Oh, her best friend is Lieutenant Eddie Hearn,” Eve said as if anyone who was anyone knew who Eddie was.
“Hearn?” Glenn asked, popping the pipe back into his mouth and munching on it thoughtfully. He was sure that name rang a bell.
“Um hm,” moaned Eve good-naturedly. “He’s on the Devon Police Force, and he has loads of friends on police forces everywhere.”
Glenn stiffened up, smoking on his pipe to calm his nerves. “Everywhere, eh? Very interesting.”
Feeling hoodwinked and bamboozled, he knew he was backed into a corner. Eventually, Juliet Jones would get word back to this Hearn, who would in turn contact his friends in New York, and bam! Sabine would be seeing the contest from the inside of a cement cage with a cell mate named Louie who was strangely attracted to his entrancingly gorgeous visage.
Suddenly a piece of advice came rushing back to him. It was from the homeless man outside his dingy hotel in Queens who was shouting something in drunken slurs holding a cardboard sign that read “May bee today is the day!”
Maybe today was his day, Sabine pondered, making a solemn oath to himself. If Pike could placate the Jones girl – and he meant the “mayor” Jones girl – then he would go legit from now on. No more cons, lies, fibs, or baby bibs. He would run this contest as a legitimate host and walk away from his life of crime… forever.
His decision now was all riding on Pike Setter.
Part 26: People are not always what they seem
Mon, 06 Jun 2022 02:25:24 GMT
Description: Pike Setter takes Julie to the Brooklyn Zoo in an effort to win her trust and reveal a plan to save the Miss Teenager contest. Along the way, Julie is beginning to reconsider her assumptions about whether or not she had judged Pike Setter too harshly at first.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 26.
Against her better judgment, Juliet Jones was starting to rethink her assumptions.
From the very beginning of meeting Pike Setter back at the Devon Train Station, she had presumed the worst about the man. Yes, she was admittedly biased against men who smoked more than five packs a day and dressed sloppily. She was also the first to agree that men had a tendency to flirt with the opposite sex for selfish gain, like she discovered from Pike Setter on the train ride to New York. He had been stealthily touching her thigh before receiving a stern warning from Julie in the form of a do-it-and-see-how-fast-my-claws-can-tear-out-your-eyes stare. He had relented and she gave him that, but she hadn’t gained any kind of trust for the man since.
Okay, so he had come to their hotel with secret information about his crooked employer and shared it with her in places Glenn Sabine would never find them, like the top of the Empire State Building and a quiet place in Central Park where they got lost. He had also seemed legitimately concerned that Eve was in trouble, but later made it clear that he was doing it all for Julie.
Finally, to prove his innocence in the racketeering mishap called the Miss Teenager pageant, he took her to the Brooklyn Zoo to prove that King Kong was literally a chimp, and lo and behold, it was there! Behind bars looking pitiful and sad-eyed, the chimp was alone with a tiny sign outside his little jail that simply read “Kong.” Julie asked Pike what had happened to his title of King, and Pike shrugged it off with a smart-alecky remark that it was Hollywood that had conferred that title upon him.
Julie pondered these things as they walked along the sidewalk past two Kodiak bears who were apparently fighting with each other over a piece of hamburger that a child had tossed into their cage. If Pike Setter was trying to win her trust like a tennis match, the man was winning in straight sets.
Then he came up with the game-set-and-match winning serve: an ingenious plan, one that would save Eve and the pageant.
“There’s just the ghost of a chance I can pressure Sabine into making this teenager contest legit,” Pike explained with his head down thoughtfully and his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“How?” she asked. Julie watched him closely. Was it true? Could it work?
“Just gotta figure out if Glenn’s yellower than he is greedy,” he said, his cigarette bobbing up and down at his lip.
As they walked on ahead, Pike gently held Julie’s arm. She stiffened up at his touch, but decided to soften at this recent turn of events.
Setter went on to explain. “If it develops he’s yellow, I give him a bad case of jitters and he goes legit. Worth a try, Julie?”
Julie stifled a grin. This was more than she had hoped. Now, instead of them trying to do the impossible and cancel the whole operation, Pike would turn it around into a legitimate pageant!
“Yes,” she blurted out. It was absolutely worth a try!
Tue, 31 May 2022 02:53:09 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine, still fretting over the possibility of Juliet Jones ruining his grand vision for a Miss Teenager contest, gives orders to his illustrious assistant to keep her occupied until the show is in the books. With his mind on how to keep her pleasantly occupied, Pike Setter is more than willing to follow his orders.
Eve Goes to New York – PART 25
To Glenn Sabine, the host of the Miss Teenager pageant, Juliet Jones was the enemy of all that was unholy. And he would know. He did know. At least, he could act like he knew. By George, he was an actor, after all, and in his tiny little mind that ran on four-and-a-half hours of sleep a night and castor oil to keep his brain working at capacity, he was an actor of the finest quality. In his humble opinion, he was second to none, 5-star, bang-up, blue-ribbon, possessing a don't-count-your-chickens-before-they-hatch kind of greatness. That was before the critics showed up and ripped his stalwart ego to shreds.
His last show was an off-Broadway musical entitled Paint The Town Anything But Red, in which he played bellhop number two. Critics blasted him for being miscast, saying that he looked more like an elder statesman than a proper bellhop at a hotel. It was the word "elderly" that got under his skin. He was only approaching thirty-four, for Pete's sake. How could they call him old? Since no one told him that the critique had nothing to do with his age and had actually been meant as a compliment, he almost decided to quit acting altogether. That was when he got the idea of taking a "break" from his dramaturgy and hit the road on this crazy quest to find girls who could be gullible enough to sign up for a Miss Teenager contest. He had met Pike Setter at a bowling alley in some washed-up Podunk, and the rest was history.
They had begun this whole shindig a year ago to the day. And were they now going to be stopped by Miss Juliet Jones high and mighty?
Sabine grabbed Pike Setter by the lapel and yanked him forward in a miff. Setter wasn't fazed in the least. The same expression that he had when Sabine grabbed him was the same blasé look he would have had if he were crossing the street in front of a bus. As always, Setter's cigarette hung loosely from his lips. But Sabine had bigger fish to fry than Pike's nasty smoking habit.
"Get ahold of that Juliet Jones, Pike, and talk to her," Sabine spat, livid with the emotion of pent-up frustration and lost patience. "She could ruin the whole gambit!"
Pike's tone was sarcastic. "You mean convince her of your inherent honesty and sincerity, Mr. Sabine?"
Sabine looked left and right, confirming that the Miss Teenager contestants were a safe distance away before he spoke right up in Pike's ugly mug. "Tell her anything that comes into your devious mind," he ordered. "Just keep her immobilized until this thing is over."
That afternoon in Central Park as the autumn leaves tumbled across the sidewalk, Pike Setter settled next to Juliet Jones on a park bench for two. The breeze produced tiny ripples across the surface of the lake, the perfect romantic scene, Pike thought. She had been asking him about the contest again.
When he edged closer to confide a secret, Miss Jones made a face and scooted away, watching the lake. Pike grinned at her playing hard-to-get.
"Now I'm operating under specific orders to calm your jittery nerves," he explained, "placate you, and keep you out of Glenn Sabine's receding hairline."
Pike was happy now that he had an excuse to get closer to her. Even better, now he had orders from his boss to do just that.
Part 24: Watching and worrying
Tue, 24 May 2022 02:32:12 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine recounts to himself the various levels of stress that have built up around his creation of the Miss Teenager contest. Now more than ever, he is convinced that Juliet Jones is a terrible threat to the whole project.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 24.
Glenn Sabine was fidgeting. The last thing he needed were more headaches. As if he didn’t have enough to do around here! Let’s just go through the checklist, shall we? Go to every single town and city in the United States for a year recruiting the prettiest teenage girls for the contest. Check. Max out credit cards in twenty-one banks and loans along the way. Check. Arrange lodging for all the girls in high-class hotels in Manhattan, while he stays in the roach-infested dump of all dumps enduring Pike Setter’s incessant snoring and body odor. Check. Jack the price on a photo shoot at Hector of Hollywood’s while he walks away with a handsome cut. Check.
Oh, if he ever just sat down to consider what this dream he had in mind for the contest was costing him, physically and mentally, he’d go bonkers.
And there was still so much more to do! For instance, smacking Pike Setter upside the head for being an imbecile and forgetting to put the coffee on in the morning, forcing Glenn to be late and make lame excuses to the girls, like the hair dryer was busted so he had to wait for his hair to dry, which most of them understood, being girls with hair. Then there were the logistics of the pageant, like firing the incompetent event caterers for providing the girls with only muffins for breakfast and a very limited supply of pretzels and carrot sticks instead of actual meals.
But the biggest headache of all… was from the one person who had the courage enough to stand up to him and use her brain for something other than what most women her age did: Juliet Jones. Mayor Juliet Jones, no less. Just the sound of her name was enough to frighten him to the core. The lecture she had given him and Pike Setter back at the roach motel in Queens contained enough lessons to confer on him an honorary Doctoral degree in Guilt and Stupidity.
One thing was for sure, he was going to have to subdue her, silence her, in any way, shape, or form. The fact of the matter was: Juliet Jones was dangerous.
He turned from jabbering with the Pike to see Eve Jones arrive for rehearsal, acting all chipper as usual, like a lightning rod that needed no lightning to set it ablaze.
“Good morning, Eve,” he greeted her. “Your – ah – sister with you?”
Eve giggled. “You mean ol’ watch-and-worry? Nope. Know what, Mr. Sabine?”
Glenn had to think for a minute. He did know what, but he was often wrong in his assumption. At least, he knew that much. This time he would ask. “What?” he replied in what seemed like almost a full minute later.
Eve swung her blonde curls about, shaking her head in amazement, as she explained with a laugh. “Julie’s actually concerned about whether the prizes – you know, the movie contract and stuff… are actually real. Imagine that!”
Glenn swallowed hard but kept his poker face, staring at Eve. “Imagine that.”
Behind him, Pike had to get in his snide remark. “Tsk! Tsk!” he scolded quietly.
Part 23: Suppose you break her heart
Fri, 20 May 2022 04:55:02 GMT
Description: In the hotel room at the Star, Julie struggles with telling Eve the truth that might completely break her heart. In contrast, Eve dances around the room as she gets ready for rehearsal.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 23.
The nightmare that had robbed Julie of sleep would not leave her mind willingly. It was like a guest you invited to your home for coffee and donuts but refused to leave until after a full-course dinner and soup. Floating in the clouds above New York had felt so real. Apart from creepy Pike Setter’s head nod and the blinding glare from Glenn Sabine’s greased-back hair, Julie couldn’t help but think of the signs from both of them that the Miss Teenager pageant was just a hoax, and Eve was destined not for stardom but for a lifetime sentence in heartbreak city.
The question still remained: how was she going to break this news to Eve? The last thing she wanted to do was break Eve’s heart, but if she told Eve the truth, wouldn’t she be doing Eve a favor instead of letting her fall flat on her face and embarrass herself in the process? Poor Eve. She had never come so far in a beauty pageant or stage contest in her life. The thought of the main event not fulfilling the expectations of her little sister with the biggest heart in the world was crushing. Oh, what should she do? What could she do?
Julie pondered these things as she sat on the bed and watched Eve get dressed for her day of rehearsal. Eve was on cloud nine, singing to herself I Told Every Little Star as she danced around the room with different outfits from the closet, deciding which one to wear.
“Oh, baby, I’ve told … every little star … just how sweet I think you aaare… Why haven’t I told you? Da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-da-da… Friends ask me, am I in love, I always answer yes… might as well confess… if the answer’s yes…”
Then melodramatically, Eve clutched her chest and held her shirt there, closing her eyes and singing to a fictional lover.
“Maybe you may love me, too… Oh, my darling, if you doooo, why haven’t you told me? Da-dum-da-da-da-da-da….”
Eve giggled to herself as she buttoned up her blouse and rolled up the sleeves. As she did so, she glanced over her shoulder at Julie and frowned.
“You haven’t said a word in fully an hour, Julie!” Eve said. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be rendered speechless, not you!”
This was it. All or nothing. Julie had to say something. “Eve…” she began hesitatingly.
“Huh?”
Julie tried to think of what to say, gently touching her chin and choosing her words carefully. “Eve… suppose you do win, and… well, you don’t actually get a movie contract and… and all the prizes?”
Eve stopped what she was doing and spun to Julie. She opened her arms wide. “But how could that ever be?” she retorted. “Mr. Sabine said everything was all set. Why ask a question like that?”
Julie sighed softly. There was no easy way to do it. Maybe Eve would have to find out on her own. Or maybe Julie could tell her another time. “I… I was just crepe hanging, I guess,” said Julie. “Skip it.”
Part 22: Dreams of victory and defeat
Tue, 17 May 2022 02:43:29 GMT
Description: That night, while Eve dreams of victory, glamour, and stardom on the stage of the Miss Teenager pageant, Julie has nightmares of Pike Setter telling her the contest is a fake!
Eve Goes to New York. Part 22.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you, your winner of this year’s Miss Teenager pageant, Eve Jones!!”
The voice of Glenn Sabine blares out from the stage over an audience of thousands. They all rise to their feet in wild applause. Eve gasps in feigned humility with her hand to her chest, her blonde curls bopping up and down as she shakes excitedly. With a wide grin and a gaping mouth, she spins left and right in shock as if they had all invited her to a surprise birthday party just for her. She glances across at the other finalists who have lined up on stage and are all clapping respectfully as they submit defeat to the winner of the contest. There’s Paulina Ima Effin Sickles, and there’s Judy, and Kaitlin, and Amelia, girls she has come to call sisters in the past few days. Sporting high heels and her pink bikini, Eve steps across the stage tall and confident, giggling and embarrassed by all the attention given to her.
There’s Julie in the front row clapping and shouting something that Eve can’t hear over the commotion. Julie is beaming, so proud of her little sister’s victory!
Glenn Sabine holds up the trophy that looks like a huge cup that hockey players would win in a championship, called Stanley-something-or-other. Across its glistening bust reads “Miss Teenager 1961.” On the top of the trophy is the piece de resistance: a blonde teenage girl in a pose that looks exactly the same as Eve’s right this very moment. “Why, it’s… it’s me!” she gasps again in absolutely stupefied astonishment!
…
From the hotel room at the Star, the blissful sights and sounds of victory, glamour, and excitement filled Eve’s dreams. But meanwhile, in the very same hotel room that very same night, her sister Julie tossed restively with contrastive nightmares of her own.
…
For some reason, Julie is floating in the clouds high above Manhattan as she overlooks the city in miniature. How is she doing this, she wonders? Is she floating or flying? There’s Pike Setter, smoking his millionth cigarette, leaning back arrogantly on a park bench in the sky. He’s nodding his head at her again, his eyes glaring into hers like he knows a secret that she should have known before, like she was too stupid to figure it out and only now is finally understanding, like a punch line you don’t get until minutes after a joke is told.
Then she watches in amazement as a small craft airplane cruises casually by. The pilot turns to her, grins widely, and waves to her. She stares in astonishment as she realizes the pilot is Glenn Sabine! She would knew that greased-back hair anywhere! Off the tail of the plane hangs a long banner with the sign “Fake Miss Teenager Pageant… Idiot!”
Suddenly she gasps as Pike Setter springs up in her face, pointing his finger at her like a gun. “Glenn Sabine’s strictly a phony, Mayor Jones. A no-goodnik out for a fast buck!”
Julie screams and Pike Setter fades into the clouds……
…
In the hotel room, Julie sprang awake, pulling herself out of her outlandish nightmare. She was panting and sweating. Glancing over at her sister, she saw that Eve was sleeping soundly and undisturbed with a happy grin on her face. Julie collapsed back to her pillow.
How was she going to break this news to Eve without breaking her heart?
Part 21: The sacrifice it takes to make it
Tue, 03 May 2022 02:49:19 GMT
Description: At an empty theater on Broadway, the Miss Teenager contestants get to know each other and line up on stage for instruction in the contest protocol. Together they bond over the sacrifice it takes to make it to the top.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 21.
Meanwhile, at the corner of Broadway and 7th in the place known to locals as Midtown West, contestants of the Miss Teenager pageant were gearing up for the contest that was now only days away. It took the better half of the afternoon for Eve to get to know the other ladies in the pageant. Backstage, Eve and Paulina Ima Effin Sickles, otherwise known as Paula, the girl whom Eve had met in the lobby of the Hotel Star, were doing their hair and makeup in mirrors with big bulbs over them like a proper dressing room of the stars.
There they joined the other girls in binging on snack pretzels and carrot sticks. Everyone had been so hungry from their measly breakfast of a small muffin and coffee that when the old man in a white suit came in with the snack bowl, the girls practically trampled him, jumping over him to get at the snacks first. The poor man was so startled that he was shaking and spinning in odd contortions to get out the dressing room and away from the madhouse of ladies with big appetites, who had probably been starving themselves to look good for the contest.
As they snacked, they were laughing about their photo shoot experiences at Hector of Hollywood’s modeling agency. They all giggled and squirmed when they recalled how funny it had been to be schooled by Tutu in the fine art of walking and posing. One of the girls was all like, I’m so gonna try that twitchin’ walk on stage in the contest! Another was like, don’t be square, none of the judges are going to be impressed with that wiggly-womp hip sway! And everyone fell over laughing. Eve made a mental note not to do the hip sway.
It had also come as a shock to everyone else how much it had cost for the photos, but everyone agreed that Hector and Glenn had been very professional about it, so obviously nothing sinister would have been insinuated. The cost of the photos was a small price to pay on their way to the top, they all agreed. Eve kept silent about the price she had already forked over for private acting lessons with Glenn Sabine in addition to her trip to New York. Yes, the sacrifice was great, Eve thought, but her dream was worth it!
Later on, Glenn had them dress in their bathing suits and line up on the stage while he stood in the orchestra pit and ooed and ogled them with the perversion of a man half his age. He kept nodding with approval and saying Mm-hm, mm-hm, very nice! Lovely, Eloise. Extraordinary, Denise. Stand up straighter, Betina. Good. Eve, turn slightly to your left. That’s it.
Then he instructed them on how to walk across the stage after the pageant had begun. “You each walk slowly across the stage, face the judges… smile, turn briskly, walk back across the stage, pause, and then into the wings.”
Ophelia, the tall, tan girl with short hair from Ipanema, a small town on the coast in Georgia, was fretting. She turned to Eve and shook her head. “I just know I’ll pass out! I just know it!”
“No, you won’t!” Eve shot back in a forceful whisper. “You mustn’t! None of us can let Mr. Sabine down!”
Part 20: I’d like to see more of you, Miss Jones
Tue, 26 Apr 2022 03:05:48 GMT
Description: In a cab on the way back to the Devon Hotel, Julie ponders the truth about what Pike Setter had told her about his employer Glenn Sabine. That is until he reveals his true motivation for helping Julie and Eve in the predicament they find themselves in.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 20.
Having spent the day galivanting about the city with the illustrious Pike Setter, Mayor Juliet Jones had to continually remind herself she was on a mission. She doubted very much if she would ever make a perfect spy or investigative journalist for the Devon Call or undercover detective for the Devon Police, but it was the fact that little sister Eve had jumped headlong into something that was way out of her depth and Julie had needed answers.
So in between her expeditions to the coffee shop and the Empire State Building, Setter had given the game away and revealed that Glenn Sabine was what she had always imagined – a fake, a phony, a sham, a mockery of all things beauty pageant. If that was the case, Julie had surmised that Eve couldn’t win the dust on her gown.
But the glaring question still remained: was it the truth?
The cab ride from the Empire State Building was quiet. Julie pondered recent revelations in her mind while Pike Setter lit up yet another mini-stogie. He was staring at her through the shadows like a psycho measuring up his next victim. Was it her imagination or did the nod of his head ever stop moving? It was like he held a secret no one this side of Saint Louis knew, but his nodding came across as creepy, like a Roberto Clemente bobblehead doll.
Although he had mentioned that there was a rift in his relationship with his employer, Setter was still silent on his true motivation to help Eve. Julie wasn’t buying the Sir Galahad act anymore. As she turned to meet his eyes with distrust, she had the distinct feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling her, something he was holding back.
As if he could read her thoughts, he spoke first to break the ice. “Why am I spilling this load of vitriol about Sabine? Because in my odd, twisted way, I like you, Miss Jones.”
Odd and twisted were good words to describe him, but Julie sighed as her eyes broke free from his. Maybe she was too harsh on people. It was a trait she had picked up from too many breakups, too many false promises, too many nights spent eating pizza with Pops instead of in a husband’s arms.
She glanced back at him as she softened her gaze. “I’m grateful for what you’ve told me, Mr. Setter.”
Pike leaned into her space in the back of the cab, forcing Julie to lean closer to the passenger door. “Gratitude you can get in plastic containers these days,” he said. “I’d like to see more of you. Can I?”
Here it was. Not Sir Galahad at all, but a man with a single-minded mission to capture the queen. Question was, could she allow herself to be checkmated by Pike Setter of all people?
As she stepped from the cab, she buttoned up her long coat against the cool breeze. She turned back to the cab, having made up her mind. “I’ll call you this evening,” she said.
“Better if I call you,” he replied through the open passenger window. “My employer frowns on moonlighting.”
As she watched the yellow cab skirt back into traffic, she shook her head at herself. Juliet Jones, what have you gotten yourself into this time?
Part 19: Eve can’t win anything
Tue, 19 Apr 2022 01:46:08 GMT
Description: Still at the top of the Empire State Building, after receiving the news that Glenn Sabine is just a blowhard with a scam complex, Julie starts to test Pike Setter's sincerity. If Eve is in trouble, Julie wants to make sure his claims are the truth.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 19.
Besides her continual curiosity about whether or not there was ever a moment Pike Setter did not have the desire to light up a new tobacco-stick, Juliet Jones was beginning to question his sincerity. Okay, so he had shown up at the Hotel Star with news that her sister Eve was in trouble, claiming to be her Sir Galahad with a knock-off smoke-reeking suit and tie. She could handle that part. Of course, he couldn’t talk in the lobby of the Star. Oh, no, far too dangerous, Pike had said.
In the coffee shop around the corner, in whispers and double-checks to see if anyone was eavesdropping, he had eluded to the fact that the Miss Teenager contest that Eve was participating in was “a fake, see, and it’s all Glenn Sabine’s fault.” Obviously suffering from paranoid delusion that he was being continually “watched” by Sabine, Setter had dragged Julie up to the top of the Empire State Building in order to spill the beans and blow the whistle on his illustrious employer. Then there were the false claims that King Kong had actually been a small chimp from the Brooklyn Zoo.
There was something about all of this that didn’t add up. If King Kong had actually been a chimpanzee, why did the film makers make him a giant ape? The two animals were clearly not the same. Then there was the fact that Pike and Sabine had been bromance buddies since birth, or so it had seemed in their dingy hotel room in Queens. It was time for some answers.
“Why are you telling me about Glenn Sabine, Mr. Setter?” Julie inquired. “Isn’t he your employer?”
Pike leaned back against the stone wall, cool and suave like he was the poster boy for a Marlboro ad. He swiped a match and lit up yet another death stick. Here we go, Julie thought, rolling her eyes. He sucked in smoke and blew it back in Julie’s face, making her cough.
“If the definition of an employer is one guy who pays another guy a salary,” he remarked with distain, “leave me throw some doubt on our relationship. Sure, he promises me a juicy cut, but Sabine’s long on promises, short on performance.”
Julie let that sink in for a few silent minutes as the breeze picked up on the top of the Empire State Building, flapping her scarf in the wind.
Pike took a seat on a nearby bench, leaning back and stretching out his arms on the top of the backrest. He watched Julie with a knowing nod, his cigarette hanging loosely from his lips.
“Then Eve can’t win anything,” Julie said, disappointment tearing through her heart. “Except grief!”
“So be it, mayor,” Pike replied. “You sum it up neatly.”
Part 18: Disclosure at dizzying heights
Mon, 04 Apr 2022 03:13:03 GMT
Description: Pike Setter drags Julie up to the top of the Empire State Building to find a place to talk "secretly" without prying ears. Will what he have to say be the revelation that Julie has been looking for?
Eve Goes to New York. PART 18.
To Juliet Jones, the proximity to the clouds was a much shorter distance than to the street, high up on top of the Empire State Building. As she gazed out over the horizon, she saw barges hooting along the Hudson River and modern skyscrapers like the Hotel Star and others dotting the landscape in miniature. Trucks, buses, and yellow cabs scurried about like matchbox cars on the crisscrossing boulevards and avenues below.
Pike Setter asked her if she had ever visited the famous building, in which the legendary King Kong had once climbed up the side and hung off the top spire, growling to the world. He spoke as if King Kong were an actual monster that did exactly what the movie had portrayed in real life and even added that if King Kong hadn’t rescued that gorgeous blonde “dame”, as he called her, the world would never have known of the true story behind the legend: that King Kong was actually just the name of a baby chimpanzee who had escaped from the Brooklyn Zoo. Julie would have laughed at his joke if she wasn’t watching his eyes that showed absolute seriousness through his cigarette-induced smoggy haze.
It was time to get down to business. This wasn’t a pleasure call, and if it weren’t for Mr. Setter dragging her up here, she never would have come. So why did he take her here in the first place? As the breeze on the open-air observation deck of the 86th floor ruffled Julie’s hair, she asked him as politely as she could.
“I talk better from dizzy heights, mayor,” he responded, lighting yet another cigarette with which to smoke his life away. “Besides which, this is my town, sort of the personal Bailiwick of Pike Setter.”
He was about to say something else completely inconsequential when Julie cut him off at the pass. “Mr. Setter, you started something back at the coffee shop,” she reminded him, “and then you dragged me up here. Well, we’ve arrived. Now go on, please.”
Setter eased back into relaxation mode, stuffing his hands into his pants pockets and giving Julie a long awkward scrutinizing gaze, squinting and nodding like he was fitting her for a dress. “You don’t look the impetuous type, but a guy can’t go by appearances.”
This was followed by another stretch of silence as he turned away from her and leaned on the railing to stare at the city view below. “O.K., here it is,” he announced, flicking his half-lit cigarette over the railing and turning back to face her. He moved with exaggerated sluggishness, like rehearsing for a Clark Gable stand-in. He was casual, he was cool, he was the epitome of imbecilic nonsense.
“Glenn Sabine’s strictly a blowhard,” he said. “A nothing looking for a home.” He stared at his fingernails while sucking his tobacco stick. “Do I elaborate?”
This was news to Julie, perhaps what she had suspected all along. If it was the truth, Eve was in big trouble.
She turned to him with a gaze that could cut steal with ice. “Yes,” she said in a low voice.
Part 17: Her knight in shining suit of smoke
Tue, 15 Mar 2022 03:05:42 GMT
Description: In the overpriced coffee shop around the corner from the Hotel Star, Pike Setter fills Julie in on why he had asked to meet with her. Julie can't figure out if he is friend or foe.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 17.
Juliet Jones hadn’t touched her coffee in five minutes. It was always black, no sugar, no cream. So why was she stirring her coffee with a spoon as if she had added either one? Realizing she was losing her mind over this Miss Teenager pageant, she placed her spoon on her saucer next to the cup and took a breath.
She was also completely convinced that the coffee shop just around the corner from the Hotel Star, where she was now sitting, was designed for tourists who had dough growing out of their ears. One glance at the menu and she almost coughed up the sip of coffee she hadn’t taken. Recovering to lady-like politeness, she dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. Seriously, bacon and eggs for $2.50! Highway robbery! Back in Devon, for the same price, you could get a sirloin steak, a chef salad, a Coke, and your car washed while you ate! Ah, how she desperately missed home.
How long she would have to stay in this overcrowded city of thrills might have depended on whether or not she could prove that the Miss Teenager pageant was a fake. And the closest clue she had to solving that mystery was sitting directly across from her, sucking down his umpteenth cigarette and wafting secondhand smoke in her face.
Pike Setter, the illustrious other half of the dynamic duo with Glenn Sabine, had been going on and on about how he had grown up in this city, or just visited an awful lot as a child. Julie couldn’t tell which. She was only half-listening.
Finally, with a little prodding from Julie’s impatient consternation, Mr. Setter got to the point. He strangled the last of his cigarette in the ash tray. “You’re convinced that Glenn Sabine’s a fake, no?”
Convinced or not, there was a little thing missing called proof. “Go on,” Julie said.
Pike was taking his time, lifting his cup of coffee to his lips and blowing on it. “I am what is known in this town as a sentimental slob,” he explained with great modesty. Julie immediately agreed about the slob part.
“That means I’ve got more heart than is good for me,” he continued. “Hence, the built-in sneer I feature,” he said, sipping his coffee and wincing from the spike of vodka he’d added earlier, “it’s my protection. So…”
He hesitated. Julie watched him carefully. What in the heck was he getting at?
“So I’d like to play Galahad to you and your improbable sister.”
Julie’s mind quickly sifted back through her English history lessons. Galahad was King Arthur’s chief knight. So… Pike Setter was looking to be a hero to her and Eve. Their knight in shining armor. Or suit of thirdhand smoke. This was beginning to get very interesting.
“Keep talking,” Julie smirked and raised a mischievous eyebrow, “Sir Galahad.”
Part 16: Sprightly mornings and coffee
Tue, 08 Mar 2022 02:01:10 GMT
Description: As high-spirited Eve slips out of the hotel room for a Miss Teenager contest practice run, Julie receives a phone call from none other than Pike Setter who has some news that he must share with her directly.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 16.
Juliet Jones rarely slept in. The mayor of the town of Devon was always up before anyone else in her home. Normally she’d peek in Eve’s room across the hall and find her little sister snoring softly in some contorted position with her blonde hair splashed across the pillow. On any given morning, Eve would be talking in her sleep, hugging her pillow, and muttering her ex-boyfriends’ names, saying things like, “What’s wrong? Don’t you like my dress?” Julie would grin and head off to the kitchen where she’d prepare the coffee and fried eggs, ham, and toast for Pops, Eve, and herself.
Eve would eventually patter down to the breakfast table in her slippers and pajamas with her hair in complete disarray and her eyes half-open. It was only after her breakfast and a shower that the spunkiness of Eve’s personality would burst as she darted about like an out-of-control shooting star.
But there was something about being in New York City for the Miss Teenager pageant that made Eve suddenly appear mature beyond her years. More calm and collected, ready to take on the world. This morning was no exception.
When Julie opened her eyes and saw the clock on the bedside table that read 8:05am, she had a good mind to fall right back to sleep and chalk it up to a vacation sleep-in. She didn’t have to cook for Pops, and it was rare that she would get a vacation from the continual political affairs of the mayor and the town’s needs that never seemed to end.
She sighed heavily, grinned, and closed her eyes. Just a half an hour more… Just then, the light clicked on and Eve flittered out of the bathroom with her round garment bag and dressed for success.
Julie lifted her head from the pillow. “What’s this crack-of-dawn routine, Eve?” Julie asked with a horse throat.
“Rehearsal for semi-finals, Julie,” Eve replied on her way to the door with an exuberant grin. “Be good now.”
Later that morning, after Julie had showered, dressed, and done up her hair, the phone rang. It was a man’s voice. Must have the wrong room, was her first reaction. He introduced himself with a name that sounded like Psyche Zedder. What kind of a stupid name was Psyche, she thought? Was this a gag?
“Who?” Julie asked. Apparently, the man removed his cigarette to say it clearer. “Oh… Mr. Setter.”
He said he had to see her pronto, and wondered if she’d like him to come up to her room. Mr. Setter in her room? Alone? Um…. No. Way.
“No,” she replied politely, “I’ll come down to the lobby.”
She found him in the gift shop, flipping through the pages of the magazine Mr., opened to an article entitled, “The Moon Maidens – A Factual Report.”
He turned when he saw Julie, his half-smoked cigarette bouncing on his lips. “What’s your morning libation, mayor?”
“Coffee,” answered Julie without a shred of emotion. His sarcastic smirk when she’d visited their hotel room in Queens was still fresh in her mind. “You said you had to see me. Is it about my sister?”
Tue, 22 Feb 2022 02:00:30 GMT
Description: While Eve Jones models her outfits in the door mirror of her hotel room, hoping to strike the Miss Teenager pageant judges' fancy, Julie returns to the room after her run-in with Glenn Sabine and Pike Setter.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 15.
Turn left, right, check out the back, purse your lips, flash a smile, a gasping surprise, a toss of the hair over your shoulder. For Eve Jones, the door mirror in the bedroom of the Hotel Star was a portal into another world. For two hours, she stood in front of it, trying on outfit after outfit and imagining how she would look on stage when the audience lights dimmed, the crowd hushed, and the stage lights came up on the Miss Teenager contestants. Miss Devon, of course, (i.e. Eve Jones) would be smack dab in the center of center-stage, she imagined. When it came to which girl the audience would be ooing and awing, Eve wished on all the stars in the universe that it would be her, but the question of which dress to wear to bowl them over was an ever-present perplexity.
She practiced her posing exercises that she had learned from Tee Top back at Hector of Hollywood’s modeling agency. In her magic mirror, she imagined stunning the judges with every dress she tried on from her luggage, but it wasn’t enough. Something was missing. She tapped her cheek. Yes, the bikini.
Now, this! This was sure to strike the judges’ fancy. As she checked herself out in the mirror wearing the bright red bikini, she groaned. Feeling a little bloated in the hips, she blamed the malt milkshake that she had ordered on her last visit to the lower Manhattan diner with Julie. Oh, what did it matter now, she thought? A little extra bulge wasn’t going to hurt her chances. It might even improve them by filling out the bikini bottoms with some extra curve to impress the judges. She grinned to herself. Mm-hm, she nodded.
Just then, the door opened and in the mirror, Eve noticed her sister entering the room with a heavy sigh. Julie flung the hotel key down onto the desk in a miff. As she shed her coat by the closet, she watched Eve posing.
“Hi, Julie,” Eve greeted with a pleasant tone. “Like this little number?”
Eve turned her hips left and right in the mirror to catch the right angle of her pose. “Where were you?” she asked Julie nonchalantly over her shoulder.
As she wrenched off her gloves, Julie turned to Eve, “Shopping.”
Eve loved how the halter strap on this bikini revealed more shoulder. “Looks like you didn’t find anything that struck your fancy,” Eve said.
“No,” Julie seethed. “I didn’t find anything that struck my fancy!”
Part 14: All cards on the table, boys
Tue, 15 Feb 2022 04:30:14 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine and his crony get sideswiped upside the heads by a lecture from Mayor Juliet Jones on the ethical consequences of running a fake Miss Teenager pageant.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 14.
It felt like two solid hours, give or take a five-minute powder break, for the mayor of Devon to lecture the boys on the ethical consequences of running a fake Miss Teenager contest. It was obvious how much she loved her sister, Glenn Sabine thought, he’d give her that. But this went way beyond protection. This was obsessive sibling disorder, or whatever the psychological term was for a woman like Juliet Jones who marches through a dingy neighborhood in Queens in broad daylight and barges in unannounced to warn him and his fried-fish of an assistant of wrong-doing.
He could tell she was holding nothing back, venting all of her frustrations from childhood until the present day like an out-of-control Uzi, peppering bullets of slander at doors, windows, ceiling fans, and whatever or whoever was in range. He had tried to interject once or twice but was shot down each and every time. It was like sitting before a firing squad, blindfolded and gagged with a stuffed bandana in your mouth, and letting the shooter take practice pops at random body parts before the real execution began.
His chain-smoking imbecile of an assistant just sat there with his tail between his legs and his mouth shut, like a nude portrait model.
Finally, after she had said her piece, Juliet Jones rose to her feet. “That covers it, gentleman,” she said with the dignity that had been stripped and stolen from Glenn Sabine’s soul. “Either you’re running a real contest or you’re playing some kind of cheap – and dishonest – game.”
Sabine had had enough. It was bad enough that he had lost precious time practicing his golf game, but he needed no one like Miss Jones to come around and wave her little pretentious license around like she owned the place.
“Good-bye, Miss Jones,” he said, mustering the tiny bit of pride that was left in himself.
After she had gone, the raging inferno inside of Glenn Sabine would not calm down without a good jug of the hard stuff. Problem was, the room only had water and he had maxed out his tab at the front desk. Water would have to suffice. And water, it would be.
He whirled on Setter with his hands on his hips. No, he hadn’t. Had Pike actually touched his precious putter and was, at this very moment, setting up for a shot? Had the man absolutely no morals?
“Well?” Glenn bellowed. “Drop that silly stick and say something!”
Pike’s head was down for the shot. Then he let it loose. TAP!
“Fore!” shouted Setter like he was on the back nine at Augusta.
The golf ball rolled across the carpet. And wouldn’t you know it? It clicked precisely into the shot glass.
Lucky shot, Pike. Lucky shot.
Part 13: What it takes to face lions
Fri, 11 Feb 2022 01:42:06 GMT
Description: What does it take to sit before lions and come out unscathed? Julie has felt fear before, but not like this. Sitting before Glenn Sabine and Pike Setter, she is shaking like a leaf, but somehow she finds the courage to say what she must.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 13.
Julie reluctantly took a seat on the chair that was offered to her. She would have stood if her hands weren’t trembling, but as she sat, she gripped her handbag on her lap so as not to appear as frightened as her fluttering body betrayed. The heart of Juliet Jones was hammering in time with her racing pulse. After all, it was not every day that you walk into a den of lions and expect to come out unscathed. Still, for the sake of her sister, she would stand before criminals, lions, zebras or what-have-you and come out victorious, come hell or high water.
“Is that what you want to know, Miss Jones,” said Glenn Sabine in a smooth voice like a cool mint aftershave, “whether I’m an honest businessman or… or some unscrupulous exploiter of young women?” Sabine lackadaisically swaggered across the carpet to set up another putt.
Julie pursed her lips. This man spent way too much time caring about his golf game. She was also fully aware of Pike Setter’s scrutinizing gaze behind her. The deeper fear pressed, however, the bolder she felt. You wanna face lions? Think of the one you love.
“My sister Eve has her heart and soul in this Miss Teenager contest,” Julie stated bluntly, “and if she loses legitimately, she’ll live through it. But if she’s merely a pawn in a cheap game you’re playing…”
Juliet stopped short of threats. It was hardly like her to do so. Normally she was all action and few words. It was how she had become mayor. That and being tough and direct with people who were hiding things. And Glenn Sabine was one of them, by George!
Sabine whirled on her and held out his putter as he opened his arms. “Miss Jones,” he announced with force, his tone changing to deliberate and rough. “The proof is in the pudding, and furthermore, I resent your implications.”
“I wish I’d said that,” muttered Pike, pulling out yet another cigarette with which to smoke his life away.
Part 12: The courage to stare them down
Thu, 10 Feb 2022 02:22:47 GMT
Description: What would it take for you to go to great lengths to protect the one you loved? For Juliet Jones, it meant following her sister to New York City to keep Eve from falling flat on her face if and when there was a Miss Teenager contest. Now it was time for Julie to confront the ones responsible.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 12.
Sometimes the courage to do what is right can drive you to take greater risks than you ever expected, especially to protect the ones you love. Such was the case with Juliet Jones. To protect her sister without interfering in Eve’s freedom of choice, she had gone to great lengths. Summoning the likes of her friend Eddie down at Police Precinct One in Devon led her to understand more about the two bozos who were organizing this charade called the Miss Teenager pageant.
Let’s just say, what she discovered, she didn’t like, but there was no concrete evidence to throw these clowns in the slammer. With her sister Eve completely bewitched by them into believing that she might have a chance to fulfill her dream, Juliet simply had to move to action. Staying close to Eve meant accompanying her to New York City to watch over her like a hawk, but when Julie was forced to cover her sister for the money for a photo shoot, two hundred bucks worth, she would no longer stand idly by and watch these two bags of unsterilized poop ruin her sister.
That’s why she showed up unannounced at the dingy hotel in the heart of Queens. It was time for some answers.
Sabine was clearly shaken at her presence, having been interrupted in a little game of mini-golf, it looked like.
“Well,” Sabine began, holding up his putter, “to what do I owe the honor of this unexpected pleasure?”
“Curiosity, Mr. Sabine,” Julie responded with courage and inner fortitude. She was not going to be shaken by these cowards. “Just plain, unvarnished female nosiness.”
Sabine was confused. “I don’t think I understand…”
“I do, chief,” Pike Setter said, slithering over to the both of them. “She wants to see if we’re a couple of crooks. That about cover the ground, mayor?”
His arrogant sarcasm was overwhelming, but Julie decided to play it safe. “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, Mr. Setter.”
Wed, 09 Feb 2022 03:18:29 GMT
Description: With wads of time on their hands at the sleazy Hotel Bexley, Glenn Sabine focuses on winning Augusta National with his greatly improved putting skills. Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. Who in the world would dare interrupt the most important game of his life?
Eve Goes to New York. PART 11.
The night had dragged on and on. For Glenn Sabine, what else was there to do but focus on his game? The last thing he wanted to do was to engage in a conversation with his half-witted assistant. Plus, his putting skill was showing minor improvement. In fact, he had almost even made one in the glass. Once he had dinged the rim and he was about to jump for joy until the blasted buzzard rolled off to the side and he almost lost his faculties.
Just as he was about to toss the bleeding golf club through the dingy glass window, he stopped himself. He fixed his hair, swiping the greasy crop across his forehead, as he took a deep breath. It wasn’t worth giving up. Not now. He had already putted 256 times at that little glass and missed each one. He was damned if he was going to blow his last four attempts. Just one more … This would be the game changer. The difference between Arnold Palmer and Glenn Sabine. Lining it up… steady now…
Just then, there was a knock at the door. It couldn’t be room service. He had already maxed out his tab from the front desk.
“Get it, will you, Pike?” he said, looking that golf ball square in the eye.
“Yeah,” mumbled Pike as he opened the door.
No one in the whole wide world was going to distract him from this putt. It was like the entire course at Augusta National had gone silent, the spectators holding their breath, and even the birds pausing to watch … and wait.
“Well!” Pike cried out cheerfully. “Fancy meeting the likes of you in a dump like this.”
Sabine was vaguely interested in who Pike was talking so buoyantly with. It certainly couldn’t have been room service.
“Who is it?” Sabine asked with intense concentration on his putt.
When he turned his head, he was immediately struck with a combination of awe and embarrassment. It was Eve’s sister! Juliet Jones! The mayor! And here? No, she couldn’t be here now…
“Oh!” Sabine half-choked down his saliva. “Miss Jones! Well, please come in! Pike, pull up a chair for Ms. Jones.”
“And what for you, Master?” Pike asked with an air of contemptuous sarcasm. “The decanter of smelling salts?”
Seriously, Glenn would never get this guy’s sense of humor in a hundred years.
Part 10: Doing it sensationally
Fri, 04 Feb 2022 07:55:14 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine and Pike Setter settle in to their New York digs while they wait around for the contestants to arrive. From Glenn Sabine's viewpoint, things could not get any better than this, unless he sank a putt into the shot glass.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 10.
The Hotel Bexley was a dive bomb of stink, rattle, and roll. Situated on the subway line in the heart of Queens, however, and directly across the street from a barred-up graffiti-plastered convenience store, the place had its fringe bennies. They could save a buck staying at this rat-infested roach motel while still having convenient access to downtown, thereby making the Miss Teenager girls believe that their illustrious host was just a few blocks down from the Star in a classier location.
Classy. Sabine had altered his definition of the word months ago when he had started up this gig. What had he become now? Just a no-good snake in the grass next to his no-good pain-in-the-ass of an assistant. Staying at places like the Bexley with winos who yacked like stray cats in the alleys and binge drank on who-knows-what for most of the night until they passed out in the dumpsters. Sabine knew that came with the territory, but it was only a matter of time now, he thought. Soon he and Pike-something would be the wealthy recipients of all the participants’ money, or their parents’ hard-earned cash, whichever showed up in New York first.
Outside the tiny closet-size hotel room window, police sirens wailed, car horns honked, and New Yorkers shouted obscenities at their neighbors. Ah, city life! Inside the room, Sabine was about to win the Augusta National with ten under par. With his putter, he tapped golf balls across the carpeted floor into an empty shot glass that lay on its side. What else was there to do while he waited for all the contestants to arrive?
Pike sat at the mangey hotel desk, tapping a pen on the metal lamp to the tune of “I’ve Told Every Little Star” by Linda Scott. Dum-da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-da-dum.
“Well,” piped up Pike, bored to tears, “how’re we doing, Glenn?”
Sabine took aim and tapped a golf ball clear across the room, missing the cup by several yards. Without even looking up, he rolled another ball over with his putter to take its place. “I’m doing sensationally, friend – You… you’re on salary, remember?”
“Yeah,” drawled the Pike. “What I can’t remember is when I got paid last .”
“You’ll be paid up to date,” Sabine promised his protege with a handful of annoyance and a side of sarcasm.
The arrogant high-and-mighty Pike leaned on his elbow at the desk. His cigarette was a stick of smoldering fire. “Don’t forget to save enough for a long ocean voyage, Mr. Sabine.”
Part 9: And then there were two
Thu, 27 Jan 2022 03:21:48 GMT
Description: Juliet and Eve return to the Hotel Star and discover, to Eve's heart's delight, another Miss Teenager contestant. Does this prove that Glenn Sabine's Miss Teenager Pageant is indeed a legitimate contest?
Eve Goes to New York. PART 9.
The lobby of the Hotel Star was nothing short of a mob scene that night. Guests were coming and going in droves, and the check-in counter was bearing the weight of a massive queue behind one front desk clerk who was holding down the fort with politeness and a smile.
That was when Juliet and Eve returned to the hotel through the revolving glass door. Eve was still reeling from the run-in with Hector the photo guy who charged an arm and a leg for a professional pre-pageant photo shoot. Glenn Sabine had conveniently disappeared for the time being.
Then over by the elevator doors, Eve spotted another teenage girl with her mother. She looked tall, healthy, well put-together, and smiling. Eve gasped. Those were the exact four characteristics of a Miss Teenager contestant! It couldn’t be… but… it must be!
Grabbing the attention of her sister, Eve pointed out the girl who stood by her mother. “Julie, there’s another one, I’ll bet!”
Julie had been in her own little world as well, probably still reeling from having lent her sister two hundred smackeroons out of her own pocket.
“Another what?” Julie asked, glancing around.
“Miss Teenager contestant, of course!” Eve beamed.
For the next few minutes, Eve and the girl found common ground in conversation. Her name was Paulina Ima Effin Sickles, or just Paula, as she preferred to be called. They talked of their photo shoot, the gown they were planning to wear to the big event, the dashing Glenn Sabine, and even the weirdness of Pike-something. Neither one of them could remember his full name in that moment.
Just off to the side, the girl’s mother was practically shaking with apprehension for what her daughter had done. “Oh, dear,” she murmured to Julie confidentially. “I don’t know how we ever got into this. Frankly, I’m terribly confused.”
Julie glanced back at Eve and Paula yapping and laughing like the cackling of hens on a farm. She shook her head. “Frankly, Mrs. Sickles, aren’t we all!”
Tue, 25 Jan 2022 05:52:16 GMT
Description: Eve and Julie digest what just happened back at Hector of Hollywood's modeling agency where they had been forced to pay two Benjamins for the photos that Glenn Sabine ordered in the first place. Whose fault was it, anyway?
Eve Goes to New York! PART 8.
In the back seat of the cab that wound its way through the inner veins of New York City, Eve Jones was fidgeting. What in the hill of beans had gone wrong back at Hector of Hollywood’s modeling agency, she wondered? One minute she was high on life, a professional supermodel with pose-coaching backstage, a fake ocean breeze through her hair, and a promising future in front of the camera. The next minute her sister was forking over two-hundred bucks of blood, sweat, and tears.
Eve had always assumed that Glenn Sabine would ante up the cash for pretty much everything she did here. Think about it, the hotel bills, taxi cabs, and three square meals for starters. Then there were the tiny indulgences like room service for breakfast that she had ordered with strawberries and cream, and the full-body massage and cucumber-cream facial from the Latin hotel masseur that she would have to cancel later. And obviously, without exception, the photos of the Miss Teenager contestants that Mr. Sabine had ordered… hello… himself! It was like being invited out to an expensive dinner buffet, spoiled to the teeth with all-you-can-eat lobster and wild king salmon, and then having to pick up the tab in the end! For the whole table!
Wasn’t it Mr. Sabine who invited her to New York City after all? Wasn’t he under obligation to take care of all her expenses? Then again, maybe not, she conceded. The man was just the chairman of the board. He wasn’t the treasurer, or something like that. Hector had just kept clicking the camera like his life depended on it. For hours! There must have been hundreds, no… thousands… of photos in the end!
“After all,” Eve said, turning to her sister who sat next to her in the cab, “you could hardly expect Mr. Sabine to pay for those pictures. Could you, Julie?”
Juliet was tight and rigid. “I suppose not, Eve,” she replied with sullen undertones.
Meanwhile, back at Hector of Hollywood’s studio, Glenn Sabine slipped out from the shadows unnoticed, a pipe lodged in his lips. Hector jumped a mile. When he caught his breath, he turned to Sabine. “Where were you hiding, in the elevator shaft?”
“Never mind with the weak humor, Hector,” Sabine muttered indignantly. Smoke billowed from his pipe like a chimney in the dead of winter. “Ten percent of two hundred is twenty bucks. I’ll take it in one bill.”
“You’ll take it, dear boy,” Hector spat back, waving the check in his fingers, “after I’ve cleared this check.”
Fri, 14 Jan 2022 01:07:59 GMT
Description: Eve Jones freaks out after hearing that she needs to pay out of her own pocket for her photo shoot. Wait until she hears the price! How will she get out of this without involuntarily working at Hector of Hollywood's modeling agency to pay it off?
Eve Goes to New York! PART 7.
It had been a long day for Eve at Hector of Hollywood’s modeling agency, dressing in outfits and posing for hours under the hot baking lights. But this was no joke. You don’t just throw around demands for a deposit on something that was already paid for. Eve’s mind whirled out of control. Beads of sweat formed on her brow. There was nothing hilarious about having to fork over cash after believing that Mr. Sabine had arranged to take care of all the expenses.
Eve was vaguely aware that Julie had hustled into the model’s chamber from the waiting room to join her.
“Deposit!” blasted Eve. “But I thought Mr. Sabine was paying…”
Hector was holding back a condescending grin. “Dear me, no! I do make a special price for you Miss Teenager contestants,” he explained. “Practically work for the love of it. That will be two hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred!” Eve declared, almost fainting, reaching for the nearest desk to support her weight.
How was that even possible, she thought? Didn’t Hector realize that in the year 2022, that amount would be the equivalent of one-thousand eight-hundred and fifty-nine dollars and eighteen cents? Judging on the average inflation rate per year of 3-point 72 percent, of course. Well, Pops had been a lawyer with exceptionally good math skills, so the calculation was a no-brainer for Eve. But two hundred dollars?! Smack her behind and call her baby! Without Pops here, how would she even have access to that kind of cash?
Outside in the foyer, Julie was writing out a check for the amount that the photographer requested, pressing the pen almost through the carbon copy as she wrote.
“Thanks,” muttered Eve, feeling a lightning bolt of guilt tear through her heart. “I’ll pay you back when I’ve won, Julie. Honest!”
Yes, she would, Eve determined to herself. This was getting out of hand.
Part 6: Eve Jones, supermodel!
Mon, 10 Jan 2022 05:13:10 GMT
Description: After a morning of intense prep, it's all lights, camera, action on Eve Jones as she strikes poses, wets her lips, and says cheese for the glamor shots that will take her straight to stardom and back.
Eve Goes to New York! PART 6.
For the better portion of the morning in the photographer’s studio, Eve was rushed through a whole series of events leading up to her actual shoot. She listened to the photographer’s assistant named Tee-Top, who sounded like a woman, rattle off insanely nonsensical ideas for different poses that he had in mind. Then he would demonstrate them by walking an imaginary cat-walk and flail his arms about. Wickedly shifting his hips left and right, he struck a pose like he was the main attraction. Finally, he declared with hands, fingers, and eyes wide open, That! That is what I want you to do!
Then it was all about clothes: dresses, bikinis, you name it, all laid out in front of her. She tried them all on and practiced posing the way Tee-Top wanted her to, but she couldn’t get the poses just right. She must have fallen at least a dozen times trying to flail her arms and stand like Tee-Top had. Instead of berating her, however, Tee-Top squealed excitedly and clapped with his fingertips when she struck a pose the way he had demonstrated.
Afterwards, for well over an hour, she sat in the chair and got her hair and makeup done by a woman who was dressed in florescent clothes, had half-closed bloodshot eyes, and smelled like marijuana. But it was all worth it. In the end, Eve had more makeup on than she had ever worn in her life and looked almost better than she felt!
Filled with confidence, she strapped on the bikini and went for broke, posing left, right, and all points in between. She was on point with every pose that Tee-Top had coached her on and she didn’t fall even once. With the backdrop of a fantasy island, she acted like she was on the beach with the sea breeze through her hair. The experience was so exhilarating that she decided that if acting didn’t work out for some unforeseen reason, modeling would be her next choice.
Hector of Hollywood was not at all the way she had imagined him. With gray hair and tired eyes, he looked more like a retired school master, but later she realized that when he was behind the camera, his super power clearly showed through.
“Natural!” Hector belted as he snapped off several shots in rapid succession. “Look natural. Wet your lips… say ‘cheese’… and there we go!”
The second shoot was in a blouse and skirt where Hector kept asking her to pull it up over the knee. Then he would draw closer, snapping off one, two, or three shots with moaning and groaning into the camera like he was making love to it. Honestly, Eve found it more than a little creepy, but if this was what stardom was like, she was determined to do exactly what he asked, and then some.
“Just the ghost of a smile,” he bellowed. “No, not a grin. I only want the slightest hint of some inner mirth,” he further explained with stifled passion as he squeezed out several more shots at various angles, including one from lying on the floor!
When it was finally over, Eve was exhausted. She turned to him and shared the honest-to-goodness truth. “Gosh,” Eve gasped. “I never dreamed posing was such hard work!”
“Ghastly!” he admitted with a tinge of sarcasm. “You’ll want to leave a deposit now, I presume?”
For a moment, Eve held her breath. A… deposit?
Tue, 04 Jan 2022 02:16:37 GMT
Description: With Eve up in the hotel room getting ready for the photo shoot that would make her a star, Julie calls Pops from the lobby pay phone and fills him in the details of their arrival in New York.
Eve Goes to New York! PART 5.
As soon as they got settled into their suite at the Hotel Star, Julie decided to take a walk and give Eve some breathing room to unpack and ease her mind about the upcoming event. She went down to the lobby and called Pops on the payphone.
Yes, the train ride was very scenic, everything they had imagined. Yes, they had had lunch on the train and remembered to eat their greens. No, Eve hadn’t given up and dropped out of the contest. Julie told Pops that Eve was up in the room right now trying to pick out the right dress for Glenn Sabine’s special photo shoot. Yes, of course, Julie promised, she would keep Pops informed of the minute-by-minute details. He would be the first one to know if Eve won the contest.
Julie breathed a heavy sigh after she hung up. It wasn’t so much that Pops was acting all weird, but that she still had a nagging feeling that this whole shebang was a fraudulent conspiracy, posing as a legitimate show in order to lure teenage girls like Eve there for one sick reason or another. She would keep her eyes peeled for any nonsense and if she so much as smelled the tail end of a rat, she’d call the local police and have Glenn Sabine staring at more bars than a chimp at the Brooklyn Zoo!
Back in the room, she found Eve basically doing the same thing she had been doing when Julie had left: deciding. Why in the world would a beauty pageant contestant even need to have a photo shoot after she has been accepted into the show? Julie asked Eve.
“Glenn says I have to have oodles of new pictures ready if and when I’m picked as Miss Teenager,” Eve explained as she pulled clothes out of her suitcase, scavenging to find her gloves, hidden in there somewhere.
Juliet was eyeing the photographer’s business card with some suspicion. “‘Hector of Hollywood’ … Is that the photographer?”
Eve chuckled and tossed her perfectly feathered blonde hair to the side. “He’s world famous, Glenn says. Practically photographed all of the Hollywood glamour queens.”
As Eve turned to the door with her round cosmetic suitcase in hand, Julie stopped her.
“Carry your bag, ma’am?” Juliet asked with an overtly pleasant demeanor.
“What?” asked Eve, pausing as she reached for the door. Julie tried to hide her devilish little grin. Eve would know sooner rather than later that Julie’s “business” in New York was clearly to watch out for her naïve baby sister.
“Oh, sure, Julie!” Eve conceded, eyeing her suspiciously. “Love to have you along.”
Part 4: The beginning of a dream - Read by the author
Wed, 29 Dec 2021 02:03:31 GMT
Description: Eve and Julie arrive in New York City in style, driven by a cab up to the infamous Hotel Star. Eve can hardly contain her excitement. The dream that she had held in her heart has finally begun.
Eve Goes to New York! PART 4.
Eve could hardly contain her excitement as the yellow cab maneuvered its way through traffic onto West 42nd Street. New York City was more amazing than she had ever dreamed. Their cab driver was leaning back in his seat as relaxed as lounging on a living room sofa. With one hand on the wheel and the other on the horn, he careened around cars, trucks, and buses through the city streets from Grand Central Station.
Eve took it all in like a child in a candy store. She gawked out the window of the cab and craned her neck to try to see the tops of the buildings as they passed. To her glorious amusement, skyscrapers surrounded every corner and reached as high as the heavens. Myriads of people clamored along the sidewalks in a pace that rivaled a walkathon. The clacking of horse-drawn carriages mixed with the near constant honking of car horns. Unlike the serene and reticent tree-lined suburban streets of Devon, New York City was wild and noisy, an overload of the senses where something was happening everywhere she looked. It had an energy, a vitality to it that almost breathed all on its own. There was a force of commotion and intensity that gave life to “the city that never sleeps.” And Eve could see why!
Eve watched as a cute horse and buggy clopped up to the front of the infamous Hotel Star. A man in a suit and tie and a woman dressed head-to-toe in animal fur stepped down from the buggy with the help of an immaculately dressed concierge who held out his hand to the lady.
“Ah, you’re stopping at the Star,” Glenn remarked impressed. “Fine place. I’ll be in constant touch with you, Eve.”
Eve flashed a grin over her sister to Glenn who was sitting on the other side of the cab. “Thanks, Mr. Sabine.”
Eve and Julie stepped out onto the curb. The driver of the cab dashed out and manually opened the trunk as another finely-dressed concierge rushed over to help with their luggage. Quickly and efficiently the concierge heaved Julie’s suitcase out and placed it on the curb. When he grabbed Eve’s suitcase, however, he lifted it out of the cab and stumbled back, taken aback at the sheer weight of it, swinging it like a pendulum in his arms and swaying left to right. Just before almost falling to the street, he regained his balance and dropped her suitcase with a thud. He heaved a sigh of relief, removed his cap, and wiped the sweat off of his brow with a neatly folded handkerchief.
Julie gave him a handsome tip, and after tipping his hat to her in thanks, he rushed off to help someone else.
“Oh, when do I have my pictures taken?” Eve asked from the curb.
“This evening,” replied Glenn from the cab. “It’s all been arranged.” He wiggled his little fingers out the open window. “Toodle doo!”
When the cab drove away, Eve lifted her head in triumph. She inhaled the smell of horse manure and exhaust from the city streets as if it was fresh country air. “It’s beginning!” she said to Julie. “The whole wonderful thing’s actually beginning! And Julie, I’m really glad you’re here to share it with me!”
“So am I, Eve!” Julie replied.
Mon, 13 Dec 2021 05:27:40 GMT
Description: On her way to New York City via the Express train from Devon, Eve dreams of life as a Hollywood superstar when train rides, butlers, and maids will be commonplace.
Eve Goes to New York! PART 3.
Summer countryside of farmland and rolling green hills blotted the landscape both east and west as the diesel locomotive blasted full speed ahead. The soft cushioned parlor seats and the lull of the click-clack over the tracks was a soothing sedative. Eve closed her eyes and breathed slowly and evenly. The excitement of traveling to New York was overwhelming at first, but onboard the train, she finally relaxed and allowed all the cares of the world to float away.
Then she opened her eyes. That creepy Pike Setter was eyeing her again through his smoky cigarette haze. He was sitting cross-legged in the seat directly across from her in the double-seats that faced each other. For some reason, he was seated next to Julie. Eve had been placed next to Mr. Sabine, who was sitting opposite Julie. Eve cleared her throat and went right on sipping her orange juice through a thin straw and brought her gaze back out the window to the wide open fields with barns and silos.
Eve loved the excitement of travel. This was merely a taste of her dream. One day, as a Hollywood superstar with a butler and maids to do her menial tasks, she would relax on trains like this, traveling back and forth from Hollywood to Devon. She would order caviar in a glass dish and eat half a teaspoonful, just to look like she was cultured, and then wave it away, along with the waiter who would be bowing and kissing up and asking if she needed anything else, anything else at all. And she would say not right now. And he would go away, but watch for her every whim from a distance. If she even twitched her nose, he would be back with a hanky in a flash. Ah, she sighed. Soon enough. For now, it was New York and all it offered a budding model and actress like Eve Jones.
On the train ride, it was Glenn who was all chatterbox. He seemed to be quite interested in Julie, and his flirtatious gestures with her stirred something under Eve’s skin that she chose to keep quiet.
“Are you in business in Devon, Miss Jones?” Glenn asked Julie, his smile like a dreamy hot strip of bacon, sizzling on the grill and left there a bit too long, popping with grease.
Eve had to bust in on that one. “Oh, you mean you actually don’t know about Julie?” she asked with astonishment. “She’s mayor of our town!” she declared with beaming pride. “You men are traveling with a real VIP.”
Julie flushed with embarrassment and grinned meekly. “Eve, dear,” she began with gentle modesty, “Devon’s a very small town.”
Mr. Setter piped up through thick smog that surrounded him and his insidious cigarette. His smirk was the poster-boy of taunting arrogance. “We all have to start our careers somewhere, don’t we, Mayor Jones!”
Was it Eve’s imagination or was Pike Setter flirting with Julie, too? For a second, she thought she saw his hand stealthily glide over to her thigh and touch the fabric of her skirt. Julie slowly turned in silence and eye-balled him with a fearless warning. He pulled his hand back and cleared his throat, turning his gaze out the window. Eve stifled a grin. With Julie onboard, Eve had nothing to fear. Nothing at all.
Part 2: Master of the empty gesture
Tue, 30 Nov 2021 02:04:21 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine's impeccably loyal assistant, Pike Setter, has an attitude. You haven't seen it ... until now.
Eve Goes to New York! PART 2.
The air in the Devon Station train terminal was oppressively stifling – more to the point, stifling Pike Setter’s style. Being assistant to Mr. Glenn Sabine came with no perks, no side benefits, compensation packages, or solatia whatsoever. Pike was one step away from dumping the arrogant show-off and taking off on his own, starting his own Miss Teenager contest that lasted weeks or maybe even months, depending on the bank loan’s minimum interest rate at low turnover.
Sure, he wouldn’t have the quick-witted brains or the slim-figured brawn of Mr. Sabine, but he could smoke a mean cigarette, and nobody – and he meant nobody – could beat him at one-on-one poker. Those were major assets, and if Glenn Sabine didn’t agree, he could just kiss his assets.
Then came this. Complaint number 5,678 since they got to this one-horse town and checked into the Ritz, translated in Devon as the dilapidated shanty they called the Devon House hotel.
Pike had hooked them all up with tickets, but there was obviously a problem. There was always a problem.
“Oh, you’re traveling by coach,” squawked the Sabine. “Very sensible, Pike!”
Pike whirled around in a miff. “Yes?”
Sabine was pouring on the charm all over Eve Jones like oil on a massage. Probably for the sake of the sister chaperone.
“Exchange these coach seats for parlor, will you?” Sabine said with that tone he got when he transformed from quiet mongrel to dimwitted ignoramus. Always the actor. “It’ll be much cozier that way,” Sabine added. “Better get a move on.”
Get a what?! Pike groaned to himself as he walked off, clutching the tickets in his sweaty palms. Who in the world did Glenn Sabine think Pike Setter was, anyway? His beckon call-boy? He thought not. In fact, he thought a thousand nots.
Of course, you had to admire the old barnstormer for his con skill, thought Pike. Glenn Sabine – master of the empty gesture, Grand Mufti of Siam. Pike huffed to himself, alone with his thoughts as he wandered away to exchange the tickets. Now, exactly how in the frigg was he expected to switch seats to parlor, pray tell? Sabine had to sweat out the bucks for these coach tickets!
This was going to be a very long train ride, he grumbled, but as he eyed the older sister from across the platform, he flashed himself a smart-alecky smirk. Maybe exchanging tickets wasn’t such a bad idea. Now he could set himself up with a seat right next to her.
Season 2 - Part 1: All aboard the New York Express
Sat, 20 Nov 2021 02:43:59 GMT
Description: On a beautiful sunny day at the train station in Devon, Glenn Sabine and Pike Setter wait impatiently for Eve Jones to arrive. When she does, Sabine and Setter are taken aback at the chaperone that she had brought with her, her gorgeous sister Juliet.
Season Two: Eve Goes to New York! PART 1.
Anxiously fretting about, pacing up and down the Devon Station platform, Glenn Sabine stared at his watch for the umpteenth time. Not much change in the past three seconds. Another train raced past, clacking along the tracks on its way to who-knows-where.
None of the passing trains ever stopped at the little outhouse known as Devon Station, he observed. They just cruised on by. Their destination: somewhere, anywhere bigger than this little Podunk. Sabine had had enough of Devon. Life here was all about being confined to his smoke-infested hotel room for days on end, just to get the Jones girl onboard.
A cloud of dust filled the station platform from the passing train that settled nicely over Sabine’s perfectly pressed suit like a thin veil of soot. He patted off the dust from his jacket and coughed.
It was a beautiful sunny day, the bright rays glistening off Sabine’s hairdo that was saturated with enough oil to slick the train tracks from here to California.
“The Jones kid was due ten minutes ago,” Sabine remarked, more to himself than to his imbecile assistant who stood on the edge of the tracks, leaning over the edge and watching for the next train to arrive. The man with wild Einstein hair and bright psychotically happy eyes at the information booth had said the train southbound to New York would be arriving any minute.
Then something in the distance caught Pike’s eye. Not down the track, but rather on the other side of the station. Eve Jones had arrived. But hello… She was not alone.
“Hold on to your collected works of Shakespeare, pal,” Pike wallowed with yet another cigarette bouncing off his lip. “But it ‘pears from here we’re being chaperoned. And…” he added with a tone of recklessly unnecessary lewdness, “no overweight Duenna, she.”
To Glenn Sabine’s immediate appeasement, Eve was clattering up the platform in a traveling dress and high heels, carrying a suitcase. His mouth practically collapsed in a heap of glorious surprise upon seeing the beauty who walked beside her. Too young to be her mother, he thought.
When Eve stood before him, she introduced her chaperone. “My sister, Juliet, Mr. Sabine…” Eve said, making introductions all around. “…Mr. Pike,” she added with significant distaste. “She has some business in New York, so… the more, the merrier.”
Her sister! Well… Although completely unexpected, Glenn Sabine grinned to himself as his eyes took her in like a gulp of cold water on a summer afternoon in July. The sister was a bit taller, clearly more mature, and with a tight crop of brunette in a bun, with a soft streak of blonde like brush strokes on a canvas. Absolutely stunning, he observed.
“A fortuitous coincidence,” he grinned broadly, bowing slightly out of the deepest respect. “And a charming one to boot!”
Sabine was so smitten that he didn’t notice the face of his assistant soften with eyes squinting through cigarette smoke. They had both noticed. Eve Jones’ sister was smokin’ hot.
Mon, 15 Nov 2021 02:46:06 GMT
Description: Preparing for her trip to New York City is a frazzling event for Eve until she discovers that her sister Julie is also planning to go with her.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 35.
The finale of Season One.
When your dream calls, you must go. When an opportunity rocks your world and brings you smack dab into the center of a fortuitous iron in the fire, a chance to break free and show the world what and who you are… that’s when you know. That’s when you go.
And Eve just knew.
As soon as Glenn Sabine had invited her to New York City, she instinctively knew … this was her time to shine.
Right this moment, however, was more or less the time to frazzle. All weekend, she had been hysterically prancing about the house half-naked trying to figure out what to pack for her two-week-long excursion.
Wearing only a white slip, Eve rushed into her sister Julie’s room for a second opinion on a sweater. She was panting and sweating profusely from having crammed every item from her closet into her tiny pink suitcase. It had only been three hours into it when she realized that she couldn’t pack that much, nor was it all necessary. Time for triage.
“Do you think it’ll be too warm for this?” she asked her sister. Taken aback at what she saw, she gasped. Her sister was neatly folding her clothes and packing them into her own open suitcase on the bed. “Julie!” Eve cried. “Where are you going?”
“Oh,” Julie replied calmly, “I guess I forgot to tell you in all that excitement.” Folding a blouse and avoiding eye contact with Eve, Juliet lowered the boom. “I have some business in New York that simply must be looked after, so…”
Eve was many things to many people, but she was not an idiot. “Juliet Jones, look me in the eye. This business that ‘must be looked after’… am I it?” This was about trust. This was about pride. What in the world was Julie thinking? Was she really planning to shadow her baby sister to the far ends of the Earth?
“You?” replied Julie with a relative measure of consternation. “Oh, Eve! How could you ever imagine such a thing?”
Eve wasn’t exactly sure what to imagine now with this curve ball tossed into the equation. She had been looking forward to getting closer to Glenn Sabine on the trip in ways she couldn’t in his confined little hotel room, but now with her sister voluntarily on the train, she had no choice but to behave herself. No matter, she shrugged. At least with Julie going, Eve would have someone to be her bodyguard against any potential threats from lean, mean Pike Setter.
The setup was good. Her heart was ready. Her sister was onboard. Her clothes were packed. Well, almost packed. Get ready, New York, Eve declared in silence as she strutted with a whistle back to her room. It’s time to rename this whole shebang, “The Heart of Eve Jones”!
______
This is the finale of Season One of The Miss Teenager Pageant. Stay tuned for the premiere of Season Two: Eve Goes to New York! Coming soon!
Part 34: Make room for the finalist
Tue, 09 Nov 2021 01:23:36 GMT
Description: With attraction to Eddie at its peak, Julie accepts his invitation to dinner just before Eve enters her office with big news.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 34.
Juliet Jones stood merely centimeters from Eddie’s charming grin that was seeping into every pore of her skin and trickling into blood vessels that led to the heart. When it arrived, it settled there happily, building a tiny campfire that sent heat to other undisclosed locations of her body.
She had accepted his invitation to dinner in two weeks time. With her schedule filled lock, stock, and barrel with mayoral duties that couldn’t possibly be put off another moment, she had originally declined. Was it his charm, his candor, his extremely dry wit like a glass of Bordeaux? She had to say yes, or regret it. She knew it. He knew it. And he said he could wait until she was freed up. So her final answer came easy.
There could have been a touch, a kiss, something. Anything. The current of attraction that ran between them had become in less than sixty seconds a palpable thing. She was seeing Eddie in a new light. She could tell that he could feel it, too. Then what shocked her the most was his chivalrous conduct as his eyes held hers and he slowly backed toward the door. A grin of respect covered Julie’s face. This was a man who could wait for good things to come.
Just then, with fiery impetuosity, Eve burst through the door almost bowling Eddie over. He stepped back just in time to avoid the letters “Mayor Juliet Jones” from the glass door being tattooed on his cheek. Eve could hardly contain her fanatic exhilaration.
“Julie!” she shouted as she burst into the room. “Hi, Eddie,” she shot politely to acknowledge his presence. “Julie, I’m going!!”
Juliet had no clue what was coming. Whenever Eve said “I’m going!” with such wild hysteria, it could mean any number of things completely inconsequential. Or, to give her the benefit of the doubt, less than .00001% of the time, it was something as urgent as her body language suggested.
“That’s Eve’s shorthand, Eddie,” Julie explained with a dash of sarcasm. “I’m supposed to automatically guess where she’s going, why, and for how long.”
“To New York!!” Eve cried as she flung herself into her sister’s arms. “To be a finalist in the Miss Teenager contest! And for two weeks! Any more questions?”
Julie was taken aback as if struck by a golf ball when you didn’t hear the other player’s “Fore!” Words could barely form themselves on her lips. Ideas could barely come. What… Wh…
“When did all this happen?” asked Julie, gasping for breath.
“Just today,” Eve replied with a wild grin, lifting her arms and dancing around the room in victory. Then she added, “Mr. Sabine says that with my acting ability, it would be a shame to keep me and Hollywood apart much longer!”
A shame indeed, Julie thought. Yes, she was sure that Mr. Sabine had Eve’s best interests at heart when he had given her such an outlandish promise. And a two-week excursion to New York. This guy pulled out all the stops! Oh, what was Julie going to do? If she tried to stop it right here and now, the consequences would be disastrous. Maybe it was time to allow Eve to experience all by herself what and who Glenn Sabine and his crony were really up to.
Part 33: Just give me a reason
Thu, 04 Nov 2021 05:41:48 GMT
Description: Julie reads the report on Glenn Sabine and wonders why her remarkable instincts in knowing people aren't working as well as she'd like them to.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 33.
Before Juliet Jones became the mayor of the town of Devon, she had run a clothing store. There were two main reasons why her business had been so successful. One: she knew clothes. The latest fashions, the hottest items, she always had particularly good instincts when it came to what to put on sale and when. Timing was everything. Two: she knew people. Catering to the adult crowd without ignoring the teens among them had been her forte, and once again, it was her keen instincts when it came to understanding their needs and wants. In short, she always took the time to get to know and care about the good people of this town.
So it was no shock that when the the portly former mayor, Teddy “Bear” Roosevelto, who was getting along in years, had decided not to run for a sixteenth term, Julie was encouraged to run for mayor. The entire town – all 50 of them – had voiced their approval. At first, she had refused. How could a woman become a mayor in 1961? Wait maybe sixty years, Julie had suggested. Then women would become astronauts, mayors, and even presidents, she had joked. But the women in town had all banded together and stormed her little clothing shop, unanimously announcing that if Julie didn’t become their mayor, they’d all skip town. That would leave about ten men without wives to cook for them or do their laundry. The whole town would be in absolute pandemonium.
So after an agonizing day or two of discussing the issue with her family, Pops had told her that it was her brilliant instincts that had brought her to where she was today. More than anything, she loved people. People loved people who loved people, Pops said. Well, she could hardly argue with that logic, so she had decided to run and won in a landslide.
So as she leaned against her office wall after having read Eddie’s report on Glenn Sabine, she was clothed in utter vexation. Her every instinct had told her the man was a crook out to take advantage of teenage girls like Eve. And those same instincts had never failed her before.
So why did the man have such a squeaky-clean record? Just a list of his acting accolades. Performed in blah-blah-blah theater in blah-blah-blah performance…. Julie couldn’t have given a rat’s behind. Just give her a reason. All she needed was a single solitary reason, and Glenn Sabine would be the next guest of honor at the state penitentiary, him and his little conniving friend. Wait, there was something. A speeding ticket! Yes, she pondered, nodding to herself. She could use that. The man was a crooked actor with a complex for getting things done way too quickly.
Eddie was sitting on the edge of Julie’s desk and waiting patiently for her to finish reading the report. He knew as well as she did that nothing on the little piece of paper she held in her hand could be used as evidence in a court of law or justify an arrest warrant.
“You see, Julie,” explained Eddie. “There’s nothing you can actually pin on Glenn Sabine. He is an actor, he’s kept out of jail… and this beauty contest of his may be perfectly O.K.”
“Too true,” Julie acquiesced. For Eve’s sake, however, she had a good mind to march right over to that Devon House and give Mr. Sabine and his crony more than just a piece of her mind. “And what makes it real rough is Eve’s wrapped up in this thing body, soul, and elocution!”
Unbeknownst to Julie, at that very moment just outside her office, her little sister – the object of all the fuss – was about to pay a visit with some important news.
Tue, 02 Nov 2021 02:19:43 GMT
Description: Eve takes a promenade with Deirdre and Shorty through the suburban streets of Devon, filling them in on the details of her acting lessons. Meanwhile, Sabine isn't done censuring his insolent partner.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 32.
August weather in Devon was a dream. Tender winds rustled pine and oak alike as the sun, not as strong as July, touched down warm and pleasant. It was the perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon promenading along a quiet street with Shorty and Deirdre.
Eve spilled the beans about her recent encounters and subsequent acting lessons with Glenn Sabine. Shorty and Deirdre were bowled over by the news. They had always known Eve had talent, but for someone like the host of the Miss Teenager pageant to personally choose her to mentor out of nineteen million other teenage girls in the country was simply inconceivable!
What luck she had had in the beginning, Eve told them, when he had expressed such an interest in her unseen talent, but that was when things started to get weird.
“Mr. Sabine’s real smooth and so talented,” Eve gushed. She hoped that the soft little thumping of her heartbeat wouldn’t be as audible to their ears as it was to hers and give away her feelings for Glenn. It was Shorty whom she was especially concerned about. He was gazing at her with a relatively suggestive look of jealousy.
“But that Pike Setter,” Eve continued, switching the subject away from Glenn to that sleazy smokestack that tried to grope her. “Well…”
“Well, what?” blurted out Deirdre, shrugging her shoulders with hands raised high. “What’s he like?” To Deirdre, every guy in the world was potential gawking and ogling material as evidenced by the hundreds of little photographs on her bedroom wall, like a mosaic of dreamy heart throbs. Eve had lent her a few herself since her own wall was already full up. In short, Deirdre needed details.
But did Deirdre really want to know about Pike Setter, Eve wondered? He was the last person in the world she wanted to talk about. Sure, he was quite affectionate when it came to hand gestures, but he gave her a severe case of the heebie jeebies with his arrogance and impertinence. He was always there in the background during her acting sessions, smoking up a storm and filling the room with a cloud of menacing secondhand air trash. He was like the stage hand that wasn’t really welcome in the wings but you couldn’t get rid of since he was somehow part of the production, too.
“He seems to be laughing at you all the time,” she explained, her mind drifting back to the hotel room where she had been stuck with the psychopath alone for almost twenty minutes. “Like he knew a big joke he wasn’t letting you in on.”
Meanwhile, back at the Devon House, Room 32, Sabine wasn’t finished letting the Pikester have it, reaming him out for his incivility around the otherwise talented and sensationally pert Eve Jones. Sabine fixed his Porkpie hat in the mirror before whirling around in a James Bond pose, pointing a finger that could cut through steel.
“I won’t warn you again, Pike,” Sabine blasted with saliva bursting through clenched teeth.
Pike was haughtily reclining on the bed with his head resting on the pillow. As was his habit, he was lighting up his six-hundredth cigarette of the evening.
“So I’m out on parole, huh?” he snarled like a bothered wolf in repose. As always, he took the irascible sarcastic approach. “That’s a nice cozy arrangement.”
Part 31: At the intersection of worry and attraction
Mon, 01 Nov 2021 01:06:07 GMT
Description: After nights of tossing and turning, the heart of Juliet Jones is stuck in a holding pattern of worry for her sister Eve. Can Julie's cop friend Eddie get over his attraction to her for just a moment to deliver what he's dug up on Glenn Sabine?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 31.
The office of the mayor of Devon was a bus stuck in a holding pattern, and the heart of Juliet Jones was the Grand Central Station of anxiety. She loved her sister more than anyone in the world – apart from Pops, that is – and would do anything to make sure that Eve wasn’t headed on a one-way street to heartbreak central.
So what do you do when practically everything your sister tells you about her dream-come-true sounds more like a clever scam from a clever con-artist bent on taking advantage of not-so-clever teenage girls? Two hundred dollars worth of pure horse manure was exactly what Julie would gamble that he was selling. Like a fish snapping its gums over a dangling worm called acting lessons, Eve had taken the bait and was all-in.
For Julie, the restless nights of tossing and turning and dwelling on this “contest” Eve was wrapped up in were starting to get to her. She hadn’t had a date in weeks, having turned down at least two potential suitors for a Friday night triple-D: dinner, drinks, and a drive-in. Now all she could think about was Eve.
So when her cop friend Eddie from Precinct One – as if there were any other precincts in Devon – rapped on her office door, she was more than a little relieved. He was dressed in a full officer’s uniform and the glint of light from his polished silver badge on his chest caught her eye. She decided to ignore that little heart palpitation and quick breath that caught in her throat when he smiled at her from across the room.
Although he removed his hat as a sign of respect, he kept his dark round shades on, maybe to hide that attraction that was completely and utterly enraptured each time they met. This was business, and Eddie was a gentleman, for which Julie was grateful. Right now there was something more pertinent on her mind than imagining a triple-D with Eddie.
Julie got right to the point. “You were able to dig up something on Glenn Sabine?” she asked desperately.
There was a piece of paper in Eddie’s hand that he promptly brought over to her. “A couple of things, Julie,” he said, extending the paper to her. “Here. Read this!”
Just as she was about to take it from him, he yanked it back and watched her. There was an awkward moment of silence between them. Was he kidding, Julie wondered? Did he want a “physical thanks”? Then he grinned facetiously and handed it to her. This time she snatched it from him like a chimp grabbing a banana and turned her back on him. So that he knew she had no hard feelings, she turned her head back to him and winked before opening the paper like it was the most important news of the century.
Eddie stood watching over her shoulder as she read the information on Sabine. This was exactly what she had hoped for. Finally, this rat would bother her sister no more!
Thu, 28 Oct 2021 05:42:41 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine has been holding back on scolding Pike for his sexual harassment of Eve Jones, but as soon as Eve leaves the room, it's go time. Will his outburst destroy the entire operation?
Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 30.
Up to this point, Glenn Sabine had been playing nice. A superficial smile here, a doltish chuckle there, observing his religious devotion to the three C’s of cool, calm, and collected. But that ship had sailed the moment the door clicked shut on Miss Jones departing the hotel room from her acting lessons.
The smoldering inferno of rage inside Sabine was threatening to unleash like a volcanic eruption of who said what and how. What Pike had done to Eve was unacceptable. It could have ruined everything.
As soon as the door closed with barely the whisper of a click, Sabine whipped around to face Pike. “One more stupid stunt like that and you’re washed up!” he cried, firing his words with the power of a sawed-off shotgun.
Whatever strength those words had to bend Pike to his will, however, was as effective as a spit ball through a straw.
Pike was counting the cash, his eyes down, his day-old cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. “Do you want to know the only real difference between you and me, Mr. Sabine?” he muttered, counting each single dollar bill one by one.
It was a rhetorical question.
Finally, his eyes turned to Sabine with ice cold nonchalance, a smirk creasing his ugly mug. “I face the fact that I’m a phony,” Pike said. “You fight it.”
Sabine had crossed the room in two steps, tops. Snatching the bills out of Pike’s hand, he returned fire with words that could stop a bus on a dime. “For the small sum of two cents, I’d kick you out of this set up!”
“Never,” Pike replied with casual disregard for Sabine’s impertinence. “You need me,” he said. “And I know where the body’s buried. What a combo!”
Tue, 26 Oct 2021 02:00:20 GMT
Description: With her acting instructor out for an indefinite amount of time, Eve waits in the hotel room anxiously with Mr. Sabine's creepy assistant, rehearsing a scene that she was neither prepared for nor expecting. Will Glenn return to stop this nut job from going any further?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 29.
Having discovered that her dashing and ridiculously handsome mentor, Glenn Sabine, was away from the hotel room where she was supposed to meet him, Eve wanted nothing more than to hightail it out of there faster than she could say “Romeo, Wherefore art thou?”
The assistant Pike Setter had said Glenn was on his way. It wouldn’t be long. He said he would entertain her until Glenn returned. Maybe she should have left the room right then and there. Maybe she should have been braver and walked away. But if she left, wouldn’t she be risking missing Glenn’s return by minutes – seconds even?
Waiting for Glenn had been excruciatingly uncomfortable, to say the least. Mr. Setter was sitting on the bed, smoking and staring at her with those eyes. Then he suggested that they rehearse lines from a play she had never heard of. Something about an ape.
As they stood to rehearse the scene, he explained that the story involved a high-society girl (played by Eve) who was somehow attracted to a worker on the engineer deck of a cruise ship (played by Mr. Pike Setter). Eve didn’t like where this was going. Why hadn’t she heard of this play? Then, supposedly “in character,” Mr. Setter wrapped his arms around Eve and pulled her close.
Eve was petrified. She figured there were only two options at this point: scream or knee him where it counts. If this wasn’t sexual harassment, she didn’t know what was! Oh, where in the world was Glenn?
Just then a key sounded at the door and before Mr. Setter could make a further move, Eve’s knight in shining suit-and-tie-combo was standing in the doorway.
Glenn was watching Mr. Setter with silent distaste. There were no words exchanged, only silence and waiting for a reason.
“Hi, Glenn,” Mr. Setter bumbled, turning toward Mr. Sabine with his arms still wrapped around Eve. “Just filling our little star in on some acting details.”
“Thanks, Pike,” Glenn replied, his voice low and gruff. Mr. Sabine’s eyes narrowed, firing a stern warning across the room at his assistant like an arrow at an archery contest.
Finally, the brute let her go, and Eve could breathe again, thankful that Glenn had arrived when he did.
As his assistant toddled away, meandering across the floor to the other side of the studio-style hotel room, Glenn turned to him sharply. “I’ll handle the acting assignment after this.” His voice returned to a softer tone as he spoke to Eve. “Now then, Eve, didn’t we have a few business details to clear up first?”
Finally! This was what she’d been waiting for! Suddenly, the memory of what had just transpired with Mr. Setter sizzled away like a raw onion on a frying pan. There was no way she would forget why she had come. This was her dream on the line. And no hairy ape was going to steal that from her, no matter how thoughtful he believed he was being by helping her rehearse a scene.
“That’s why I came, Mr. Sabine!” Eve declared, holding up one hundred dollars in cold hard cash. “Here’s the down payment.”
“Pike,” ordered Glenn, “take care of this matter, will you?”
Mon, 25 Oct 2021 02:43:53 GMT
Description: Eve arrives back at the hotel for a second round of acting lessons, but finds that Glenn Sabine has disappeared and left her in the hands of his creepy assistant, Pike Setter.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 28.
The following evening was round two. Eve Jones had signed on to become the protégé and disciple of the one and only Glenn Sabine who had taken her under his wing for the whopping price of only 100 big ones to start. And what a start it was! After only one hour of her studio-style acting lessons in Mr. Sabine’s hotel room, Eve had learned voice projection, pitch control, and… probably much, much more… although she couldn’t really remember anything after that. Mr. Sabine had completely captured her heart, and the only thing that she could bring to mind of their first lessons as she lay in bed that night were his white shorn teeth and his alluring eyes.
Now it was time to return to the hotel where Glenn would no doubt be longingly waiting for her with breathless anticipation.
Meanwhile, back in Room 32 at the Devon House, Sabine was fitting his Porkpie hat on his head when he turned to his indelible and always implicitly devoted assistant with an attitude, Pike Setter. Pike was leaning back in the plush armchair with his legs crossed and reading the paper like he hadn’t a care in the world. Probably trying to find his name in the funny pages, Sabine deduced, based on the fact that every five seconds, Pike would break out in an uncontrollable snicker. Nobody knew why.
“Back in half an hour,” he announced to the only other dude in the room. “If the Jones kid shows, hold onto her, Pike.”
“A pleasure, master,” he said sarcastically without even a glance up from his paper.
When Eve arrived at the hotel after dark, she skipped up the steps leading to Room 32. There her heart went again with its stammering and skipping beats. She paused before knocking, taking a deep breath as she smoothed her dress down the hips. She just wanted to give Mr. Sabine her best, but there was always that nagging question in the back of her mind: what if her best wasn’t good enough? Would he throw her out of the contest for the mistakes she made in acting class?
The door opened before she could even knock. Apparently, Glenn had heard her muttering to herself outside their door and didn’t want to wait.
Confounded beyond belief, she was suddenly speechless at the sight of the assistant Pike answering the door instead of the man she had expected.
“Oh, Mr. Setter,” she gasped, retreating into her shy persona. “Is Mr. Sabine here?”
“Heading this way, ma’am,” he responded. As always, a cigarette lazily reclined on his bottom lip and popped up and down when he spoke. “He said for me to keep you entertained.”
Something suddenly didn’t settle well with her about that word “entertained,” especially when it came to the creepy assistant and his devilishly quiet ways. Perhaps it was best to take a seat in the armchair and wait for Glenn.
“Why waste time, Miss Jones?” said Mr. Setter, running his fingers through his hair. His button-down shirt was somewhat open at the top, revealing a hairy chest . “How’s about you and me running through a few scenes from, say… ‘The Harry Ape’?”
The hairy… what?
Eve clutched her purse that she kept on her lap. “I … I don’t think I know that play, Mr. Setter,” she said, her pulse quickening in time with her nervous heartbeat.
Part 27: Acting lessons, day one
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 06:50:54 GMT
Description: Eve Jones steps back into the Devon House, feeling like the hotel room has been transformed into an acting studio for her very first lesson with Glenn Sabine.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 27.
Miraculously, as if magically transformed by Hollywood filmmakers, Room 32 at the Devon House was no longer a simple hotel room but Studio 8 on the backlot of RKO Radio Pictures. Eve’s first education as an actress under the expert tutelage of Mr. Glenn Sabine had officially begun.
Her first lesson: speaking like a pro.
“Project, my dear. Project,” he was saying. “The voice must flow from the larynx like lava from a flaming volcano!” With one hand, he touched his lips, and with the other, he gestured with his fingers to show lava exploding from there.
Literally, he had Eve pressed up against a wall. Was it her imagination or was something stirring in her heart with that voice that could call all the wild of Africa to band together for a meet and greet? Eve marveled. Mr. Sabine had such self-assurance. Such delicatesse! Such confidence in his own acting that Eve immediately became envious and wished upon all the stars that could shine that she could achieve such a dynamic and compelling presence one day.
Would what she had be enough for the Miss Teenager contest? No, she knew she had a long way to go to be ready, but this was an impressive start. Imagine what else she could learn if Glenn Sabine taught her 24/7!
Eve gave one more try to project. Her first attempt had resembled the caterwaul of her neighbor’s cat. Mr. Sabine’s assistant, Pike-something, had cringed and plugged his ears. Eve was determined to do better. Taking a few deep breaths like preparing for a high dive into a glass of water, she belted out a voice that sounded like she was shouting to an elderly person on the telephone. Her next attempt was more like the scream of a frightened girl in an Alfred Hitchcock picture. By her eighth attempt, her voice could have shattered glass, or at least, made the neighbors next door want to pack up their things without even closing their suitcases and vamoose like witnessing an alien space invasion.
Okay, so maybe she couldn’t project, but there was more to the lesson, as Eve soon discovered. Speaking as an actor was an art, and Glenn Sabine was a Stradivarius.
Projecting wasn’t about shouting or screaming, he explained.
“Even your merest whisper must have resonance,” he said, turning his back on Eve and whispering words that only Eve could discern if she were right there next to him. “Listen…”
Wait, was that…? Well, was it? Yes, it was! It was a word! And then a sentence. A whisper but as clear as a school bell!
Suddenly Eve gasped in complete astonishment as she touched both of her cheeks with gloved fingers. “I can hear every syllable, Mr. Sabine!” she declared with overly excessive enthusiasm. “Oh, I’ve learned oodles about acting in just the past ten minutes!” she cried.
Part 26: Protecting a loved one
Wed, 20 Oct 2021 02:04:16 GMT
Description: Protecting her sister, Julie calls in a favor from her friend Eddie down at the precinct to check out Glenn Sabine. Meanwhile, Eve shows up for acting lessons, day one.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 26.
Living in a small town like Devon came with its perks. Sure, neighbors butted into each other’s business more often than not, and a high school graduate who got into Yale would become the town celebrity, but the real advantage was the intimate friendships. You were friends with the bank manager, the mailman, the hotdog vendor on the street corner, your hair stylist who basically knew everybody, and the grocer down the way. Even the homeless man who wandered around Main Street knew your name.
And as friends, they were always ready to lend a helping hand.
Such was the case when Julie called in a favor from Eddie, her friend at the local precinct. Eddie was more than a casual acquaintance in town, however. In Devon, rumors spread like a California wildfire over bone dry desert tumbleweed. That Mr. Hoskins down at the bank liked to tell his customers that Julie and Eddie were kind of a “thing,” even though there was no evidence to the fact. She liked Eddie. Okay, yes, she admitted it. Gorgeous blue eyes and that uniform that was always kept perfectly ironed to the crease. Black shoes that sparkled in the sunlight like his eyes when they gazed into hers. But could they be a couple? Meh… He certainly liked her, that was true. Julie was hard to please, she would be the first to admit, but it was nice to know that she could always depend on him in a pinch.
Eddie picked up on the first ring.
Briefly, she filled him in on the situation. This was not about her and her feelings for Eddie, or his for her. This was about Eve falling into a potential trap. Julie was not one to sit idly by while some harebrained moron took advantage of her little sister. Eve was all too innocent and a babe in the woods when it came to… pretty much anything that she strongly desired. It was her way. She jumped in all too impulsively into the water of life, whether at the shallow or deep end, so to speak. So it stood to reason why she needed to be protected, Julie rationalized.
“Do whatever you can, Eddie,” Julie said into the phone at her office desk, tapping a pencil nervously on a notepad.
She had been scribbling Glenn Sabine’s smiling mug on the paper, or what she imagined he looked like, with a round red nose and makeup like Bozo the Clown.
“Last name S-A-B-I-N-E, huh?” repeated Eddie. “Okay, Julie, will do.”
Meanwhile, Eve had returned to the Devon House Hotel with her money. This was one investment she was sure would have lasting returns, perhaps for the rest of her life. Her dream of becoming an actress was finally taking shape.
Room 32 swung open and there was Mr. Sabine, all smiles and sparkling teeth. He was wearing a different suit from the day before, Eve noticed with a slight desperate attraction in her soft gasp.
“Ah – a magnificent entrance, my child!” he shouted in theater-mode again, extending his arm like he was the opening act and she was part of the show. “Did I not say this girl had a seventh sense, the dramatic sense, Pike?”
Pike was lazily reclining on the sofa in the room. “Yes,” Pike murmured with that couldn’t-care-less attitude again, “and frankly, I wish I’d said it.”
Part 25: Dreams of the spirited youth
Tue, 19 Oct 2021 01:43:22 GMT
Description: Eve Jones steps into the sunlight of a new day with a spring in her step, her mind whirling with dreams of Hollywood stardom now that she has the chance to be coached by the great Glenn Sabine.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 25.
Imagine your dream, the most precious and deepest desire of your heart, gift-wrapped and sparkling and dropped in your lap for the taking. Now picture the wrapping paper looking like a heartthrob actor named Glenn Sabine and you’ve got a fairly good idea of what Eve must have felt when his offer was presented to her on a silver platter. It was a gift that only she could open. The cost of tearing through the paper to get to the goods was a mere two hundred dollars.
How could she ever refuse an offer like that? Acting lessons for the Miss Teenager contest and she got Glenn Sabine thrown in as an added bonus. Boy, what she wouldn’t give for his added bonus. Not that she was expecting anything romantic to blossom and bloom between the two of them. They were, in all estimation, five or six generations apart with their age gap, but Eve couldn’t have cared less. She was never really good at math, anyway. In all honesty, it was Oscar she was after, and with primordial obsession, she wouldn’t stop her motivation train until it arrived at Hollywood station.
What would she receive in return for two Benjamin Franklins? Far more than mere acting lessons. Eve was light years ahead, imagining limousines taking her wherever she wished, concierges removing her pearly-white mink coat at the door, friendly gentlemen offering to help her walk her poodles, and a host of acting superstars huddling around her and clapping while she imprinted her palms next to the silver star that read “Eve Jones” on Hollywood Boulevard.
Per ambling with a spring in her step, her heels clacked on the sidewalk. She breathed in the summer air and the warm sun felt good on her face. Her sister Juliet accompanied her along the street outside the Devon Bank and Trust. Surprisingly, Julie had been a bit quiet since Eve had broken the news.
“I promised Mr. Sabine I’d give him a hundred dollars now, and the rest in a week,” Eve explained to her sister. “Really, Julie, it’s an enormous bargain!” she added.
Julie was nodding thoughtfully with her purse in her hand. “I suppose so, Eve. See you later.”
Maybe Julie was beginning to trust her after all. She was finally being a loving older sister who understood that opportunities to catch your dream came around only once in a blue moon.
Inside the bank, Eve bound up to the teller window to withdraw the amount she needed, softly singing the Beach Boys’ song Barbara-Ann, ad-libbing her own version. Glenn Sabine went to a dance, looking for romance, saw Eve Jones, so he thought he’d take a chance… Well, a girl could dream, couldn’t she?
“Going somewhere, Eve?” the teller asked her in a friendly tone as he handed over the money.
She’d almost forgotten that in a small town like Devon, everybody knew everybody. Mr. Hoskins was the nosy bank teller who chit-chatted about everybody’s business when they walked up for a deposit. Eve and her friends were pretty sure that rumors in Devon could often be traced back to Mr. Hoskins.
This time she was ready to give him what he wanted. Eve smiled broadly. “That hundred could be a down payment on a trip, Mr. Hoskins.”
“The way things are, these days,” Mr. Hoskins reminded her, “a hundred couldn’t take you too far.”
“As far as Hollywood, maybe?” she asked sarcastically.
Some people would never understand the dreams of the spirited youth.
Episode Bonus: Introducing Eve Jones
Tue, 19 Oct 2021 01:23:53 GMT
Eve Jones is the younger sister of Juliet, whom she affectionately calls “Julie.” As a blonde bombshell with a boppy, outgoing, and vivacious personality, she attracts love interests in any and every shape and form. But she is hardly just a pretty face. Inside her heart lies a deep well of sensitivity and grace that once awoken can become like a lioness in wild abandon.
As a woman in her early twenties with the vitality and spunk of seven women her age, Eve puts the “loco” in locomotive! Always on the move, ever swirling from one romantic affection to the next, Eve spins emotional circles around her more steadily headstrong sister who more often than not keeps her in line. Eve hates to admit how often her sister is right when it comes to her choices in men, but come on, couldn’t an older sister just let her baby sis live her own life and make her own choices?
In spite of their near constant friction, Eve loves her older sister Julie with deep affection, absolutely adores her father whom she calls “Pops,” and although has dreams of traveling the world and experiencing it all, she couldn’t imagine a place she would rather be than the little town of Devon, sitting under the shade of an oak tree in summer, and sipping lemonade with her sister and Pop.
Deep down there is a longing and yearning to burst free and fly. That’s really all Eve wants: a chance to shine like the bright sun that she is to the world. Big goals, big dreams, and an even bigger heart that even the universe cannot contain. Jump in with both feet, don’t look down, and build some wings on the way down. That’s grace in motion. That’s art in motion.
That’s Eve Jones.
Wed, 13 Oct 2021 01:46:48 GMT
Description: Eve is in seventh heaven, relating her fortuitous story of meeting Glenn Sabine and receiving his offer to train her in acting. Julie is all ears until Eve reveals the game-changer.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 24.
It was just past midnight when Eve had finally finished relating her meticulously detailed account of her serendipitous meeting with Glenn Sabine. Pops and Julie had sat on the opposite sofa to listen for nearly three hours. Julie had absorbed every word, but Pops was in and out of consciousness. With his arms folded to prevent himself from falling asleep for the fifth time, he nodded off yet again, this time raising the roof with a long drawn-out snore.
Initially, Julie would nudge him when she realized he had passed out, but this time she just let him be. Eve went right on yacking. Still in dream mode, she lay on the couch with her back resting on the end. Crossing her legs, she ran her fingers lightly over her cheeks. She breathed a loud sigh of contentment as her mind drifted back to the well-proportioned and stately host of the pageant who had swept her off her feet with his heart-stirring compliments and gracious benevolence.
“Talent’s just as important as physical perfection in the Miss Teenager contest, Mr. Sabine says. So with him helping me in acting, well,” she paused to consider, “it’ll be a breeze!”
Pops’ eyes popped back open. In less than a second, he gazed frenziedly from Julie back to Eve. Did Eve just say Glenn Sabine will be a tease? This was the part he needed to stay awake for.
Ever the skeptic, Julie leaned forward on the sofa and tossed out her question that was representative of what she and Pops, she assumed, were thinking. “Eve – does Mr. Sabine do this for all the contestants?”
“Of course not!” Eve laughed. “He said the pittance I pay him really amounts to chicken feed when you get right down to it…”
Juliet was flabbergasted, slapped upside the head with this new game-changer.
“Pay him!” Julie bellowed. What had Eve gotten herself into this time?
Mon, 11 Oct 2021 07:22:28 GMT
Description: Julie is on the verge of a nervous breakdown waiting for Eve to come home. Just when she is about to storm over to the Devon Hotel and get her pretentious on, Eve bursts through the door like the star of a musical opera.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 23.
It was 8:39 and Eve still hadn’t checked in. While Pops lounged in his favorite arm chair scanning the headlines of the evening paper, Juliet was frantically pacing the living room floor. She had read almost every magazine in the stack about three of four times! Well, maybe in all honesty she hadn’t read a single word, but flipping through the pages and perusing photos of the latest dresses and fashion icons counted, didn’t it?
And where the hell was Eve?
She took a breath, albeit a very long one, to calm her nerves. Pops had said a half an hour. She would give her sister thirty minutes and no more. That thirty-minutes was about to expire. Flipping open to the middle of the February issue of Bazaar magazine, Julie pretended to be interested in the content that she hadn’t even glanced at. It could have been men’s suit vests, for all she cared. She bit her lower lip. Counting down the seconds from fifty, Julie spied her coat on the rack from across the room. It would take very little to rush to it, throw it on, and speed in her baby-blue Jalopy over to the Devon Hotel and rap on some doors.
And when she found Eve, she would drag that Glenn Sabine out of the hotel by his skivvies. What kind of a male host – famous or not – shows up unannounced and invites his female contestants to meet him in his hotel room? It didn’t take a mayor to sound the warning bells on that one. Now Eve was late returning home. Missing her favorite meal. Missing Julie’s cooking! Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen…
Another flip of the page, and another as her eyes were glued to the coat rack.
Ten, nine… close enough. She was out of here.
Just then, the double-door shutters to the living room swung open to reveal the object of their intense worry. Eve stood in the doorway glowing like a Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
“Dust off the mantlepiece, family!” she announced with her arms outstretched. Her voice lifted to the ceiling. “A marriage is about to be arranged!”
The news threw Pops for a loop. “A — A what?” he stammered.
Throwing her head back, Eve smiled wide as she lifted her gloved hand nonchalantly in the air. “Me and Oscar,” she replied. “We’re going steady!”
“Eve Jones!” blasted Pops. “Set down somewhere and un-confuse us. Please!”
Eve glissaded into the living room with her heart aglow and her face shining like the sun. Julie knew her sister. If Eve held in the news any longer, Julie was sure that she would burst like a geyser.
Three hours later, Pops and Julie were sitting on the couch and listening intently to Eve’s overtly longwinded account of everything that went on in Mr. Sabine’s hotel room. Pops was fading, his eyes glazing over as his head dropped. Just as quickly, when he realized he was dozing off, his head popped back up, and he looked around somewhat disoriented, until he remembered that Eve was telling her Miss Teenager story. Julie was all ears, caught somewhere between wondering if she should be happy for Eve or worried sick.
“And Glenn Sabine said he’d personally tutor me in the dramatic arts,” Eve belted out as if it were not midnight but the middle of the day. “He said I had flair, and poise, and enormous promise!”
Thu, 07 Oct 2021 05:50:14 GMT
Description: While Eve gets ready to hear the terms of her mentorship with Glenn Sabine, Julie and Pops wonder what is taking Eve so long to come home. She has missed a dinner that Julie prepared especially for her.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 22.
It was already 8:05 and night had choked out whatever daylight was remaining over the small town of Devon. Julie was vexed. Eve had missed a glorious chicken and peas that Julie had spent hours of blood, sweat, and tears preparing with her little sister in mind. It was a celebration of sorts for landing an interview with the host of the Miss Teenager pageant.
In some ways, it might have been an apology dinner for not supporting her sister’s passion for the contest as much as she should have from the start. In other ways, she wished Eve might be a little bit more like her, a little more cautious, a little more investigative before jumping into something headlong before realizing only later that there were huge regrets that one could never take back. But that wasn’t Eve’s way and Julie knew it. It was what separated them as sisters.
Then there was the dinner. Julie’s boiled chicken and defrosted frozen peas – one of Eve’s favorites. A generous helping of mashed potatoes and a green salad with tomatoes from Pop’s garden had topped off one of the most delicious meals they had eaten in weeks.
But still no Eve.
“Don’t you think we’d better call the Devon House, Pops?” Juliet asked her father as she washed the dishes, dipping her rubber gloved hands into a sink full of steaming suds.
Pops was rubbing the wet dishes down with a kitchen towel. “Give Eve another half-hour, Julie,” he said contemplatively. “It’s a big day for her. Maybe the biggest so far in her young life.”
Pops had been drying the same dish for the past fifteen minutes. What could have kept Eve, he wondered? It was only supposed to be a short meeting with this Mr. Sabine, wasn’t it? And who was this mysterious ruffian, anyway? If he was so famous, why hadn’t Pops heard of him? With very little prodding, Pops began wondering how many other teenage girls Mr. Sabine was “interviewing” at his hotel room.
Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Eve’s heart was a rabbit kicking and thumping. The thought of being mentored in the theater by the one and only Glenn Sabine was almost more than she could wrap her mind around. But there was a condition. She would have to abide by certain terms, he had said.
“Terms?” Eve asked innocently. “What terms, Mr. Sabine?”
“Simple,” he replied in that tone of voice that could melt ice cream on summer pavement. “Very simple, Miss Jones.”
Tue, 05 Oct 2021 01:20:51 GMT
Description: With Eve on the edge of her seat, Glenn Sabine prepares to make her an offer she can't refuse.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 21.
Like a cement truck with a flat tire careening toward a baby carriage, Eve had braced for the worst. She knew that her reading of Juliet had gone so horrendously wrong that Glenn Sabine, the host of the Miss Teenager pageant, would have no choice but to send her packing from the hotel room awash in tears. Instead, to Eve’s shocking dismay, Mr. Sabine not only complimented her on her potential talent as an actress, but also flipped the cards and said that he would like to present to her an “offer.”
With milk carton in hand, only partially sipped through the double-straw, Eve was on the edge of her seat. What offer would he make? What could he possibly give her after such an atrocious display of her poor acting ability? Nonetheless, he had said it was an offer. She could hardly believe her ears, but her heart was having something to say about it, hammering in her chest as she leaned forward with breathless anticipation.
“I, Glenn Sabine,” he announced as if an entire live television audience were watching, “offer you – Eve Jones, the poor talent I possess, to train you in the art of the theater.”
Eve sprang out of the arm chair like a firework had exploded in the seat cushion. “Oh, Mr. Sabine!” she cried. “Do you actually mean it?”
Cool, calm, and collected: three C’s that defined a legend, or at least the look of one. “I am a man of honor, Miss Jones,” he declared, oozing the three C’s. “And I respond to a challenge. I will be your mentor – you my little trilby.”
This was too good to be true! His little trilby! Wait, wasn’t a trilby a hat? Either way, Eve wouldn’t be just any hat. She would be his hat! Eve was so beside herself with joyous hysteria that she wanted to dive into Mr. Sabine’s arms and tackle him right then and there! Her dream had been just to compete in the Miss Teenager pageant. This was far and beyond anything in her wildest imagination – an offer to be mentored in the theater!
“But, Mr. Sabine, sir,” interrupted Sabine’s assistant named Pike-something. “Your time is money! You mustn’t forget that.”
“Ah! How dense of me!” cried Sabine, slapping his forehead with his palm and pitching his head back. “Did I forget to acquaint you, dear child, with the terms?”
There were terms, Eve thought? What sort of conditions would she ever be able to promise in return for being a trilby to a master in the theater like Glenn Sabine?
Part 20: Tapping her unmined genius
Sun, 03 Oct 2021 14:15:14 GMT
Description: Will Eve get a second chance at the mock audition for the Miss Teenager pageant? It's the dashing Glenn Sabine who points out her potential, but Eve finds it hard to believe after her humiliating failure to produce the right stuff as Shakespeare's Juliet.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 20.
Even as the room service concierge wheeled in a beautifully decorated tray of drinks, Eve was gearing up for the rejection of her life. More than anything in the world, she just wanted one more shot at becoming Miss Teenager. When trying to impress the head honcho of the whole shebang had quickly gone south, she had fallen to pieces right there in his hotel room. It was like reeling from an open-handed smack upside the noodle.
Maybe she could choose a different talent to be judged on apart from acting. The only other thing she was good at was that trick where she bent the tip of her ear, balanced a piece of chocolate on top, and flicked the thing clear across the room, but that was in the third grade and she doubted if the Miss Teenager judges would be impressed by that one.
She was out of practice anyway. The last time she had tried it, she had been aiming for Deirdre’s open mouth, but instead of landing on target, it had sailed wide and hit Ms. Beamer smack dab in the left eye. To this day, she could still hear her teacher’s “Miss Jones!!” reverberating throughout the empty hallways of Devon Elementary.
No, it would have to be acting, but would she get another chance?
Ironically, it was the head honcho of the pageant himself who once again came to her rescue and emboldened her not to give up.
Glenn Sabine’s words soothed her anxious heart. “If I doubted for one second that besides a great natural beauty,” he began, “you have a distinct flair for the theater, Miss Jones, I would tell you, ‘Go back to selling gloves, or bags, or whatever…’ but that would be depriving the world of a rich reward.”
As she gripped her carton of milk, complete with two straws, Eve was mesmerized by every word that proceeded from his mouth. Was he actually saying these things about her? What potential in her could he see that she couldn’t?
As if he could read her mind, he answered her unspoken question. “…the reward of your unmined genius.”
She was completely spellbound, yet she didn’t deserve that second chance and she knew it.
“Therefore…” Mr. Sabine continued.
This was it, the rejection that Eve had been waiting for.
“I, Glenn Sabine, not in my role as Chairman of the ‘Miss Teenager’ board, but as an artist… “
Here it comes.
“…am about to make you an offer!” he said.
An… an offer?
Gulp! The sound of Mr. Sabine’s assistant swallowing his shot of whiskey shook her from what was certain to be nothing short of the longest daydream in her young adult life.
What sort of offer did he have in mind, Eve wondered?
Part 19: Rising to the challenge
Thu, 30 Sep 2021 05:21:25 GMT
Description: Despairing over her blunder playing the part of Shakespeare's Juliet, Eve listens to the advice of the one and only Glenn Sabine, who encourages her to rise to the challenge. Will his words be enough to help her overcome her mistake and still hold onto her dream?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 19.
Eve collapsed into the plush hotel chair a complete and utter failure. Clutching Romeo and Juliet to her lap, she reflected on how awry things had gone once she had begun reading the part of Juliet. “Ay me!” was Juliet’s fitting sigh to open the scene. Ay me, Eve thought! How had her reading so easily begun with “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” and then somehow spiraled out of control like a bus without brakes until it plunged off a cliff and landed in a massive pile of “art thou that thus bescreened”?
Who was she kidding, anyway? She was no actress. If she couldn’t do Shakespeare, she couldn’t do anything, she thought. The question arose in her despairing mind, how do you overcome such a mistake and still hold onto your dream? Was her dream finished? Was she?
It was the dashing Glenn Sabine who swooped in to her rescue, sitting on the edge of the chair, his warmth leaning into her side. He was her knight in shining armor, or at least, her knight in a perfectly pressed suit-and-tie combo.
“We don’t expect our ‘Miss Teenager’ to be a finished actress, Miss Jones,” Glenn spoke comfortingly. “After all, Larry, Kit… Marlon…”
Eve gasped as he sprang to his feet and gestured again like a Broadway superstar, one hand on his chest and the other pointing in the air. In one unbelievably insane moment in time, Mr. Sabine displayed his awe-inspiring acting ability. If there were an audience, they would have been struck dumb in the presence of such grandeur.
“We all started as frightened little walk-ons,” he explained. “Until the challenge produced our greatness.”
Suddenly, as if dark clouds on a stormy day yielded to a gorgeous blue sky that had been there all along, Eve had an epiphany. The challenge produced their greatness! That was it! The missing piece of the inspiration that she had failed to grasp! That was how she overcame her mistake and still held onto her dream! She was falling short of taking the bull by the horns and wrangling it into submission. If only she…
“What are you doing, Pike?” Glenn inquired as his assistant picked up the phone.
“Ordering something to drink,” Pike murmured, his cigarette lazily hanging from his lip. “I need it. Milk for you, Miss Jones?”
Milk, Eve thought? Who did he think she was? A baby who needed suckling? Well, maybe she was in that moment, but now she knew that all she really needed was another chance. And then another, and another, and maybe another. Then, and only then, would this babe find favor in the eyes of the host of the Miss Teenager pageant. The question was, would he find it in his heart to give it to her?
Tue, 28 Sep 2021 04:36:14 GMT
Description: Eve flops in her mock audition for the Miss Teenager contest. Will Glenn Sabine swoop in with his indelible charm and save the day?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 18.
Glenn Sabine was really hamming it up. He could have stepped aside and let Eve quietly rehearse Juliet on her own. He could have given her the time she obviously needed to run through the lines once, twice, maybe a hundred times before reading them aloud and making an embarrassing fool out of herself. But no… the Clark-Gable-esque stud and host of the Miss Teenager pageant would have none of it. He participated right along side, reciting Romeo’s part like he was the main act and Eve was intermission.
“I take thee at thy word!” he belted in the hotel room where Eve had come for their informal meeting. “Call me but love and I’ll be new baptized. Henceforth I never will be Romeo!” He gestured with his hands, one on his chest and the other with fingertips pressed together high in the air.
He was an acting genius, a regular Marlon Brando in Eve’s estimation. In comparison, Eve felt like a stage-hand dragged out under the spotlight and forced to play the leading role. How would she ever be able to keep up? Wait a minute. She had lost her place. Where was she again?
“Now your line, my child,” Sabine whispered over to Eve.
Yes, there is was!
“W-What man are you.. I mean.. art, thou, that, thus beschreeched … I mean, bescreened…” Eve was trying her absolute darndest, but it seemed the harder she tried, the worse it got. Should she really try again? Was it even worth it? She had repeated almost every line she had started with! More than five times!
Like a pressure-cooker ready to blow its top, Eve was boiling beneath the surface. This was not fair! Handsome libido over there was just too good. And she had to face facts… when it came to acting, she just… plain… sucked!
“Oh, what’s the use!” she cried, slamming the book shut. “I gum every line!”
Fuming and panting with frustration, Eve wanted to high tail out of there like the hotel was on fire. Then suddenly, she felt the warm hands of Mr. Sabine on her shoulders. As a natural instinct, her whole body relaxed and melted into his soft embrace. Still, no matter what he did or how he touched her, he would never be able to help soothe her egregious disappointment in herself.
“There, there, my dear,” Sabine spoke tenderly, his face resting in her hair. There he went again with his “there-there,” melting her heart. Eve could feel him holding her closely, proving that pity had won out in straight sets. But hadn’t her dream just fallen to the floor in pieces? What would pity prove?
In the end, it was his words by her ear that saved her from sinking into despair.
“You have real temperament,” he said tranquilly. “And temperament is almost as important an ingredient in acting as voice… poise.”
Mon, 27 Sep 2021 05:16:21 GMT
Description: Regretting not paying attention in English class when they had studied Shakespeare, Eve Jones tries her best as Juliet in her mock audition. With handsome Glenn Sabine playing the part of Romeo, will she be able to survive it?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 17.
Rehearsing Romeo and Juliet with Glenn Sabine as Romeo should have been a dream come true. In his perfectly pressed suit and tie, and that deep all-consuming voice, he had captured Eve’s heart as if he were Clark Gable himself. Trying to evade his subtle advances when she was already in desperate need of rescuing from this nerve-wracking mock audition was becoming downright impossible.
Now this. The role of Juliet. In love with her Romeo! How would she ever be able to pull it off?
Eve knew that the role should be played with a certain amount of emotional intensity, as with all of Shakespeare’s plays. The problem, however, was that she had hardly ever taken a passing glance at Shakespeare. In English class in high school, she had preferred to giggle to Deirdre about how sensually handsome Rickie Sundance’s wavy hair simply floated on top of his head like goose feathers. Now she regretted her hormone-driven schoolgirl antics, and she was paying the price.
“‘Thou are thyself, though not a Montague,’” quoted Mr. Sabine with an accent that was thicker than life and born for the theater. “Go on, Miss Jones,” he continued. “These immortal lines virtually speak themselves.”
The lines may have spoken themselves, Eve observed, but they didn’t help a hill of beans when it came to reading Juliet. “What’s Montague?” she bumbled.
Eve knew that Shakespeare was tough, but my goodness, she thought, was this even English?! She exhaled and swallowed hard. Come on, Eve, she told herself, you got this. She forced herself to focus on reading correctly rather than making a total dunce of herself by acting out the part and fumbling the words.
“‘O, be some other name!’” she quoted with her eyes fixed on the page. “‘What’s in a rose? I mean, ‘a name!’” She was blowing it and she knew it. Would now be a good time to start bawling? Maybe pity would distract him from the fact that she was proving how little talent she really had as an actress.
The good news for Eve was that pity was actually working in her favor, and might just have been in that moment her superpower. Although it was not her intention to flub every word, she believed that Glenn… uh, Mr. Sabine… was trying to help.
“There, there,” he said as if speaking to a stray cat that was too spooked to return home to a warm house. He ended with a gentle gesture of touching her cheek. As soon as his fingers grazed her delicate skin, she gasped softly. It wasn’t just his touch, however. He had had her at “there-there.”
“Even the most experienced of us fluff a line now and then,” he said gently. “Start over, my dear. And slowly, majestically.”
Sat, 25 Sep 2021 03:21:52 GMT
Description: Eve hesitates to audition by reading the part of Shakespeare's Juliet. She wonders if she is ready for this. Can she somehow, in some way, muster up the confidence to try?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 16.
Eve had already observed that Glenn Sabine was vivaciously handsome, and he could win any heart in the room with his charm, his way of just … standing there. But he couldn’t possibly be serious. Although Eve had told him that she desired to be judged on her acting at the ‘Miss Teenager’ pageant, she was completely thrown when he suggested that she rehearse right this very moment. In his hotel room.
And with Romeo and Juliet, for heaven’s sake! Wasn’t Shakespeare only for actors and actresses with near perfection in their delivery? Shouldn’t she start with The Cat in the Hat, or something more her level?
“But I’ve never done Juliet, Mr. Sabine,” Eve protested. “I… I thought I would sort of recite a poem… or something like that.”
Mr. Sabine waved his hand in the air, metaphorically brushing away any doubts that had arisen in her mind. He responded with such a smooth baritone voice that any other woman would have fallen in love… or been lulled to sleep.
“The test of talent, dear child,” he declared, “is the ability to improvise, to create gold from dross.” As he spoke, he gestured with his hands to emphasize the line: “Begin with… ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy.’”
Eve hesitated, but maybe with the right confidence, she could do this. Hadn’t Pops always said that with the right connections, a bit of makeup, a pretty dress, and an A-listed leading actor by her side, she might actually stand a chance at performing in a real theater one day? Okay, Eve determined, she could do this. She could… Well, she could try this. Gripping the book, she noticed that the sweat from her palms was saturating the pages.
Then it was the other man in the room, the normally silent assistant, Pike something, who threw in his two cents. “Go ahead, Miss Jones,” he murmured. “It only hurts for a minute.”
“Thank you, Pike,” Mr. Sabine said, cutting off his assistant at the pass. “I will do the directing.”
Part 15: The pre-contest primer
Thu, 23 Sep 2021 07:25:34 GMT
Description: Glenn Sabine pours on the charm as he surprises Eve by giving her a mock audition for the Miss Teenager pageant.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 15.
Glenn Sabine’s charm was all hit and no miss. It was a no-brainer that Eve would be all jittery meeting the man responsible for hosting the ‘Miss Teenager’ pageant, but she had no idea that her insides would shake, rattle, and roll the moment her hand brushed against his. Stately and stylish in a suit and tie, he exuded a confidence that reduced her heart to ooh-la-la.
Mr. Sabine slithered closer to Eve’s chair with a combination of both subtlety and audacity. “Now then, my dear,” he began, staring dreamily into her eyes and holding her delicately gloved hand. “Which of your many talents are you proposing you be judged on?”
For a second her mind froze. She had forgotten what she had decided to be judged on. Quick, she thought, what were the options? There was singing, but the neighbor’s cat always caterwauled and hid when Eve sang with her arms outstretched out of her bedroom window.
Dancing. Wait, was it dancing? She loved to go swing dancing with Deirdre at their classmates’ weekend parties. Eve was always the one laughing and getting flipped through the air the highest. No, it couldn’t have been dancing. For swing, she needed a partner.
Then it dawned on her. The image of Shorty’s mockingly shocked face popped into her mind as Eve recalled telling him with brightly glowing enthusiasm.
“Acting, Mr. Sabine,” she replied. “Of course, I haven’t had much experience,” she added, wondering if the fact that she had only ever acted in front of Julie and Pops in their backyard would play against her.
“We don’t expect finished thespians here, child,” he reassured her. Eve grinned shyly. She looked up into his eyes and found a sparkle of hope, maybe someone who believed in her.
“Here,” he said, handing her a book. “Suppose you and I run through a bit of Shakespeare?”
Her chest tightened. By “run through,” he obviously meant to scan the story silently, right? He wasn’t actually suggesting that she give a mock audition, was he? Maybe there was nothing “mock” about it.
Standing from her chair, Eve took the book from him with shaking hands. She swallowed hard.
“Ah… Act II, Scene I, Romeo and Juliet,” Mr. Sabine said, reaching around Eve and flipping the book in her hands open to the right page. “Read from here,” he suggested, inching closer behind her back. Eve could smell his cologne and feel his breath on her neck. “I will do my poor best as Romeo,” he said modestly.
“N-now?” Eve stuttered.
Yes, Eve knew now, as if before she didn’t, but she really didn’t. She was being tested! A pre-contest primer! Like a gladiator blindfolded and tossed into the pit of hungry lions, she was on center stage. Why were the walls suddenly closing in around her?
Tue, 21 Sep 2021 10:00:00 GMT
Description: Eve is smitten, sizing up Glenn Sabine as a handsome and virile actor, as he lays out his plan for why he is here in Devon. Meanwhile, something doesn't sit right with Julie and Pops about this whole setup.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 14.
Inside room 32 at the Devon Hotel, Eve sat frozen to the plush arm chair. Glenn Sabine was even more handsome and virile than when she had seen him on TV and now he was only a few feet away, pacing the floor. His wavy hair, his perfectly tailored suit, his poise, charisma, and confidence… these all added up to the qualities of the ideal actor, in Eve’s book, and Glenn Sabine possessed them to a T.
As she watched him from a few feet away, it was like front row tickets to a Broadway show. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. Her eyes softened as she drank him in like a long sip of sweet tea through a straw. He was Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and “We’ll always have Paris.” He was Fred and Ginger and their final embrace at the end of every dance. He was Joe DiMaggio and Eve was Marilyn with her seven-year itch!
Caught up in the moment, Eve felt her hands shake. She gripped the arms of the arm chair.
As her mind returned to the room, she began to wonder what Mr. Sabine was doing here in Devon anyway. Couldn’t he have waited until the contest? Quietly, she was ready to hear him out.
“I am in Devon,” he began, answering her unspoken curiosity, “incognito, so to speak. Mr. Pike Setter my assistant, and I are making a preliminary survey of all Miss Teenager contestants.”
His voice was bound and determined as he laid out his plan. “I wished, so to speak,” he continued, “to get a dimensional view of our girls. You understand, Miss Jones?”
Eve smiled broadly and responded with stars in her eyes. “Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Sabine. Perfectly!”
Yes, she would give him a dimensional view of whatever he asked for… Well, within reason. She was still a lady.
Meanwhile, back at the Jones’ house, Juliet and Pops were discussing their worry about Eve rushing off and meeting Mr. Sabine alone.
Julie had just returned from a long day at the office and was hanging her jacket on the coat rack in the living room. Both of them were confounded as to why Eve hadn’t yet returned from her meeting with Glenn Sabine.
As usual, Mayor Jones was thinking ahead. “I wonder why Mr. Sabine didn’t let Eve know he was arriving in town,” Julie said.
Pops was silent, rubbing his chin and muddling the situation over. There was something about this he didn’t like.
Episode Bonus: Part 14 - Read by the author
Tue, 21 Sep 2021 04:15:56 GMT
Description: Eve is smitten, sizing up Glenn Sabine as a handsome and virile actor, as he lays out his plan for why he is here in Devon. Meanwhile, something doesn't sit right with Julie and Pops about this whole setup.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 14.
Inside room 32 at the Devon Hotel, Eve sat frozen to the plush arm chair. Glenn Sabine was even more handsome and virile than when she had seen him on TV and now he was only a few feet away, pacing the floor. His wavy hair, his perfectly tailored suit, his poise, charisma, and confidence… these all added up to the qualities of the ideal actor, in Eve’s book, and Glenn Sabine possessed them to a T.
As she watched him from a few feet away, it was like front row tickets to a Broadway show. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. Her eyes softened as she drank him in like a long sip of sweet tea through a straw. He was Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and “We’ll always have Paris.” He was Fred and Ginger and their final embrace at the end of every dance. He was Joe DiMaggio and Eve was Marilyn with her seven-year itch!
Caught up in the moment, Eve felt her hands shake. She gripped the arms of the arm chair.
As her mind returned to the room, she began to wonder what Mr. Sabine was doing here in Devon anyway. Couldn’t he have waited until the contest? Quietly, she was ready to hear him out.
“I am in Devon,” he began, answering her unspoken curiosity, “incognito, so to speak. Mr. Pike Setter my assistant, and I are making a preliminary survey of all Miss Teenager contestants.”
His voice was bound and determined as he laid out his plan. “I wished, so to speak,” he continued, “to get a dimensional view of our girls. You understand, Miss Jones?”
Eve smiled broadly and responded with stars in her eyes. “Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Sabine. Perfectly!”
Yes, she would give him a dimensional view of whatever he asked for… Well, within reason. She was still a lady.
Meanwhile, back at the Jones’ house, Juliet and Pops were discussing their worry about Eve rushing off and meeting Mr. Sabine alone.
Julie had just returned from a long day at the office and was hanging her jacket on the coat rack in the living room. Both of them were confounded as to why Eve hadn’t yet returned from her meeting with Glenn Sabine.
As usual, Mayor Jones was thinking ahead. “I wonder why Mr. Sabine didn’t let Eve know he was arriving in town,” Julie said.
Pops was silent, rubbing his chin and muddling the situation over. There was something about this he didn’t like.
Mon, 20 Sep 2021 02:39:48 GMT
Description: Worrying more about her stutter than her stammering heart, Eve Jones trots up the steps of the Devon Hotel to meet Glenn Sabine, the host of the Miss Teenager pageant, and knocks on the door to her dream.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 13.
It was late afternoon when Eve arrived at the Devon Hotel. An air of calmness settled over the perfectly mowed front lawn. Birds chirped gaily in the summer heat, flapping their wings in the birdbath by the quaint entrance of the hotel. In stark contrast to nature’s docile mood was Eve’s stammering heart. This was the opportunity she had dreamed about for months. Miss Teenager. And the men responsible for the entire contest were right here in this very hotel, waiting to see her!
Eve got her breathing under control as she trotted up the stone steps to the front entrance. Their room was around the side, third door on the right, number 32. Just outside the door of the room, she straightened her dress along the hips. Dabbing the curly ends of her hair, she whispered to herself, “Be calm. Be poised. Don’t get rattled. And don’t stutter!”
Stuttering had always been her nervous habit when she was in a pinch. Like that time at the school social when Rickie Sundance asked her to slow dance and she said nuh-nuh-neato! In the confusion of the loud music, he had thought she said no… three times! Well, that just wasn’t going to happen again, she determined.
Eve knocked three times.
It wasn’t so much of the shock that Glenn Sabine himself answered the door. It was what he said that knocked Eve off kilter. “Ah, Miss Jones. I would say at this juncture that the camera is your sworn enemy.”
Eve tried to speak but couldn’t think of the words. “Yu-you would?” Great, she thought. So much for controlling the stutter. But what did he mean by that?
“It captures only fragments of your beauty,” he replied, taking Eve’s gloved hands in his. Even through the gloves, she could feel his heat coursing through her veins. “The eyes are the only true delineators of such loveliness in depth.”
Awestruck was a perfect word to describe her first encounter with Mr. Sabine. Her eyes were so completely captured by his that she had barely even noticed the other man in the room, the older gentleman, watching them suspiciously from not a few feet away.
Part 12: A fortuitous opportunity
Fri, 17 Sep 2021 07:25:06 GMT
Description: Nervous about meeting Glenn Sabine, the man running the Miss Teenager contest, Eve tries to hold herself together without falling apart at the seams. Meanwhile, at the hotel, Glenn Sabine prepares for her arrival.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. Part 12.
Applying her lipstick in her bedroom vanity mirror, Eve noticed her hand shaking. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Inhale through the nose, exhale long through the mouth. Try the lipstick again. Slower this time. She rubbed her lips together and watched herself in the mirror. Oh, get it together, Eve Jones, she told herself. It was only the most momentous occasion in her entire life: the chance to meet Glenn Sabine himself! My goodness, she thought, was he actually going to be there? At the Devon Hotel where he told her to meet him? Eyelashes. Mascara coating the entire lash. Careful. Don’t overdo it. She didn’t want to look like a clown.
Trying on dress after dress in her closet and shaking her head in the mirror at herself had taken almost an hour. She looked at the clock on her desk and gasped. Now she was going to be late! Picking one of the three dresses that she had chosen as “the finalists” in her closet, she buttoned it up to the neck, deliberately going conservative. After all, this was kind of an interview, wasn’t it? A pearl bracelet and loose gloves to help with the shaking hands completed the outfit. A quick spray of perfume on her neck and she was out the front door.
On her way off the front porch, she heard Pops shout after her. “When’ll you be home?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” she shot back over her shoulder as she picked up the pace. “Call you later.”
Meanwhile at the Devon Hotel, Glenn Sabine was fixing his tie, anticipating Eve Jones’ arrival. He felt relaxed and sure of himself, but caught himself chewing on the end of his pipe. A bead of sweat formed on his brow. What in the heck was he so nervous about? From experience, he knew what to expect from every ‘Miss Teenager’ contestant, especially how innocent and gullible they were. This Eve Jones would be no different.
“You ready, Pike?” he asked his older counterpart who sat on the hotel bed, smoking and fixing the camera in preparation for Ms. Jones to arrive.
Pike was sarcastic, copping an attitude like he had been forced to clean the dung from the elephant cage at the zoo. “Yeah, I got the gall, the camera… and … no film,” he replied with a heavy tone. “Did I forget anything, Bwana?”
“Only your manners, m’boy,” Sabine replied with a calm voice, unfazed by the older gentleman’s impertinence. “Get a firm grip on them before our breathless, gushing little contestant arrives.”
Sabine would be ready when she arrived. Like all the others, Eve Jones was just one more spoke in the wheel of this whole thing coming together. Perhaps their meeting would be just as much a fortuitous opportunity for him as it was for her.
Thu, 16 Sep 2021 01:09:23 GMT
Description: Eve gets a phone call out of the blue from the man who is running the Miss Teenager contest. He is visiting in Devon and wants to see her!
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 11.
Phone call for Eve Jones!
Eve glanced at the hanging clock in the hallway and wondered who might be calling her now. Shorty wasn’t planning on ringing her up until he got back from his baseball game. Sliding down the banister, she swung her legs around to come in for a perfect landing at the ground floor. She flipped her hair and picked up the phone on the standing table in the hallway.
The voice took her breath away. It was a man. A voice she thought she should know. When he introduced himself as Glenn Sabine, she knew immediately who it was. He was here? In Devon?
“Y-yes, sir,” she stuttered into the phone, almost fumbling the receiver in her hand. “I … I’ll be there… of course.. sir.”
Pops had heard the difference in her tone and wandered over with curiosity.
Eve hung up the phone with a click and stared into space for almost an entire minute before she spoke. “He’s here… right here in Devon!”
Pops was flummoxed. “Wish I knew what you were talking about, honey,” he said.
She could hardly believe what she had just heard. Glenn Sabine! Here? In the 5-foot-10, 165-pound flesh? It was like a dream you awake from and you swear was real but really wasn’t, but this… this was as real as real really got, Eve was certain! In one fell swoop, her dream had come to her!
There was no time to lose. Eve’s pulse was off the charts, her breathing erratic. She rushed past Pops and back up the stairs to change out of her summer shorts into something that said pizzazz. Or was it pizzas, as Shorty often put it? Either way, she was going to dress to impress like she’d never impressed before.
Oh, right. Did Pops say something, she wondered? He deserved an explanation.
“Glenn Sabine, Pops!” Eve explained, yelling over her shoulder as she bolted up the stairs and out of sight. “He’s the man who’s running the ‘Miss Teenager’ contest. He’s in town and he wants to see me!”
Tue, 14 Sep 2021 15:03:27 GMT
Description: At the bowling alley, Eve dreams of California ranches and life in Hollywood as she shares her happiness with Shorty and Deirdre. It's a time to dream and believe in what's possible.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 10.
Later that night at the bowling alley, Eve scuttled close to Shorty on the bench and shared her dream. The sounds of bowling balls rolling down alleys and crashing into pins filled Devon Lanes. On a Friday night, each lane was packed with players, mostly students Eve knew from high school kicking off their weekend with their favorite pastime.
Eve was still hovering on cloud nine with wings like a wide-spanned eagle. “Then maybe I’ll move the whole family to Hollywood,” she exclaimed with a thrill in her heart. “You know, in one of those sprawling ranch-type places with horses and stuff.”
“Dream on, Miss Jones,” chuckled Deirdre as she meandered over to lift a bowling ball from the rack.
“Why not?” Eve responded as if in a day dream.
Deirdre stepped up with her ball and sent it straight down the middle of the alley, but at the last second, it curved off to the left and plunked into the gutter.
Eve wondered for a moment if she was getting ahead of herself. But then she realized that what others thought of her dream didn’t matter a single bit. It was her dream, and she would keep it in her heart, knowing that dreams have a certain way of coming true.
Still sitting on the bench, Eve pulled her knees to her chest, leaned back, and closed her eyes. “There’s plenty of time for disappointment later,” she conceded. “Now’s the time to dream.” Yes, it was a long shot, but in the back of her mind, the thought always came back: how could she be disappointed? If there was a chance, it was possible. After all, wasn’t it her favorite actress Audrey Hepburn who had once said that even the word impossible was spelled She Is Possible, or something like that? And Eve knew it was true. She was possible. Her dream would go all the way!
Meanwhile, the two strangers who had just arrived in Devon were pulling into a parking space outside the Devon Hotel. It was a moderate but clean establishment, and from the outside looked more like a quaint apartment complex than the kind of luxury hotel they had imagined staying in.
They let the convertible sit for a moment as they took in the scene. With gaping mouths, they stared up at the building in front of them.
“The Ritz, it’s not,” muttered the younger gentleman behind the wheel.
“A maharajah, you ain’t,” quipped his older counterpart.
Mon, 13 Sep 2021 06:44:08 GMT
Description: Happiness bursts through the double-door entrance of Devon's teen-hangout in the form of Eve Jones, armed with permission from her family to join the beauty pageant. The only thing that could make it complete would be to share it with her friends.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 9.
In 1961, the pharmacy in Devon was a hopping place. Patrons spun on stools at the soda bar. For the cost of a quarter, the jukebox would play Chubby Checker who encouraged people to get up and twist their way to happiness. Teen friends hung out and laughed over a glass of Hires Root Beer or an Orange Crush, and if you broke the glass, it would cost you more than the drink.
When Eve charged through the double-door entrance, the song on the jukebox was appropriately Elvis: “It’s Now or Never.”
She spotted Shorty and Deirdre hanging loose at a center table, sipping Cokes.
“From here,” said Deirdre, “I would surmise that Eve Jones just got the stamp of approval from the family. You concur, Mr. Hale?”
Shorty turned his head to watch Eve make an entrance. “That’s not exactly a look of pain on the future ‘Miss Teenager’s’ face,” he replied with a grin.
Eve rushed over to their table. Standing before them, she spread out her arms like a fountain of joy bursting forth from her heart. Finally, she could hold it in no longer.
“I’ve got the most wonderful, most understandingest sister and father in the world!” Eve announced with her arms wide and her head thrown back. She was oblivious to the fact that her voice was carrying to anyone within a twelve mile radius of the pharmacy, but no one particularly paid much attention to noisy teens in this joint, anyway. It was just part of the scene.
“I admit they gave me a case of the shakes before they decided, though,” Eve said in a rapid burst of excitement. Today felt like her victory proclamation.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Eve, a pair of well-dressed gentlemen were at that very moment stepping off the train at Devon Station. As they squinted in the sunshine, the warm humid breeze of summer invaded their otherwise pleasant demeanor.
“Who’s here?” the younger, handsome man in a perfectly tailored suit and tie asked.
“Eve Jones,” replied the older man with a lit cigarette hanging loosely off his lip. “I’ll whistle us up a car.”
And just like that, the dream that Eve had once hidden in her heart was about to begin.
Fri, 10 Sep 2021 03:41:21 GMT
Description: On a beautiful summer day, Eve waits for the final verdict from Julie and Pops about whether or not she has their permission to join the national Miss Teenager contest.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 8.
A summer day in the Jones backyard consisted of lounging in the sun, drinking ice cold lemonade, lazing on the green carpeted grass, or simply enjoying the afternoon breeze in the shade of tall leafy oaks. Squirrels darted about, chasing each other from one tree to another, or joining the Joneses on the lawn as they nibbled on acorns and tossed the tops. Cottony clouds floated gingerly along in a clear blue sky, as if time itself were completely unimportant.
For Eve, waiting to get the family’s approval of her joining the Miss Teenager contest was like waiting for a summer cloud to make its rotation around the earth and back.
Pops was reclining at the hammock that swayed gently back and forth between two trees. Julie was sitting with her back against the old oak tree, fitting Eve’s photos for the contest back into the envelope.
Eve was lying on her stomach in the plush grass, with crossed legs, kicking her heels back, resting her chin in her hands and watching Julie.
“If you think it’s not – well, dignified,” Eve explained, “I’ll tell the ‘Miss Teenager’ people I can’t go on.”
Although she had practically burst a blood vessel from the stress of her sister’s potential rejection, she still trusted her sister implicitly. Okay, so maybe she was using just a tiny bit of reverse psychology.
Julie finally looked up and sighed heavily. “Eve – anything you do honestly and with dignity is all right with me – not that you need my permission. So… it’s up to you to decide.”
Eve was absolutely dumbstruck. For a second, she thought she was moving, but her body couldn’t catch up with her mind. Did she just hear what she thought she heard? Was Julie throwing reverse psychology right back in her face?
Finding that her feet could still function properly, she stood to face her father. “And, Pops, what’s your decision?”
Desperately awaiting the verdict, she held her breath in anticipation.
Pops answered with a low, tired voice. “Julie said it pretty good for both of us, honey.”
Could this finally be the door of hope that she had been waiting for all this time?
Thu, 09 Sep 2021 05:19:20 GMT
Description: Eve waits with breathless anticipation for Julie to see the pictures that she submitted to the Miss Teenager contest. The dream that she has always wanted is interrupted by Pops taking a peek at the photos. Will his opinion of her shatter her high expectations of unanimous victory?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 7.
This was it. The perfect time to hide in a hole somewhere deep in the forest and not come out for say fifteen years? Eve would have settled for her closet. It was closer and there was a lock on the door if need be.
But then, in the inner reaches of her heart, the dark, stormy clouds of doubt were shattered by one single ray of hope, the hope of a dream. This was still her dream. Miss Teenager!
She could almost smell the Prince Matchabelli Wind Song perfume on her skin as she strutted the cat-walk. She could almost feel the power of wearing Elizabeth Taylor’s chiffon and embroidered faille gown. They would call it Soiree A Rio, with an accent. It would make every other girl on that platform maliciously green with envy. After her unanimous victory, she would feel bad for Pops that the phone would be constantly ringing off the hook with offers for her to do motion pictures at every major and minor Hollywood studio!
The question was: how did her dream land in the hands of her conservative-minded older sister without so much as a “Hey, little sis, congratulations?”
Eve shivered at the thought that Julie had laid eyes on her photos. “Well… they are discreet just like I said, aren’t they?” Right hand and left hand joined forces to click each other’s fingernails.
Julie turned back to their father as he hobbled into Eve’s room. “Pop, take a look, will you?” She held up the photos for him to see.
Wait, Julie was showing Eve’s pictures to… their father?! This was more embarrassing than the time Rickie Sundance turned to her in Biology class and caught her dreamily staring at his tight bell-bottoms.
Eve held her breath.
Pops’ reply was a relief. “Very nice pictures, honey. Very nice.”
“And you, Julie,” Eve hesitated to ask, “what do you think?”
Julie held up an outdoor shot of Eve in a bikini with the background of a summer sky. “I don’t want to rush this, Eve,” Julie said. “It’s too important to all of us.”
So Eve would have to wait. Yes, and she would wait, but with expectations that were far greater than anything she had ever hoped for in her life.
Wed, 08 Sep 2021 05:03:28 GMT
Description: Rummaging through every drawer in her room, Eve searches for the envelope with the pictures that she submitted to the Miss Teenager contest. About to go berserk, she looks up and there, in the hand of her sister Julie, is the envelope.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 6.
Eve knew she was skating on thin ice. Her dream of becoming Miss Teenager was about to implode. Julie was demanding to see the photos, the ones Eve had submitted to the contest judges, the ones that might win her a place in the national competition. As she searched, her pulse quickened. Her breathing became shallow. Her palms sweat like slippery fish.
Oh, blast it all! Photos, photos, photos… Rummaging through every drawer in her dresser, she had come up empty. Every single drawer! Even ones she hadn’t opened in years, like the drawer with all those private letters she had never sent to all her boy-crushes. No, that one was recently opened.
“I was positive I put those contest pictures right here,” she wallowed.
What was she going to do if…? Oh, if ever there was a time to pull out all the swear words in the book! It was here, damn it, it was right…
“Eve?” Julie’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts.
When Eve looked up, she saw the envelope … in her sister’s hand! For a brief second, her breath caught in her throat.
“Gosh – of course!” snapped Eve. “Where were they? You mean right in front of me?” Her fingers trickled over her face, trying to cover her red hot cheeks. All of the air had suddenly left her.
Julie slid her hand into the envelope and pulled out the top of the photos. “May I?” she inquired politely before looking. Although Julie was just being mannerly, when it came to her sister’s requests, Eve dared not refuse.
“Course…” Eve responded.
She could hardly hear her own voice and her legs were starting to go numb. Was she going to faint? Since her bed was here, it would be a convenient fall. Or maybe she could bury her head in the pillows. Either one made sense. Just pick one, Eve Jones, and get it over with, she thought. The suspense of what Julie would say when she saw the pictures was more than she could bear!
Part 5: An obstacle to her dream
Tue, 07 Sep 2021 07:10:04 GMT
Description: Julie concedes that Miss Teenager must have talent, but she is curious to see the pictures that Eve submitted to the contest judges. As Eve races to her room in a panic, Julie follows right behind.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. Part 5.
Eve knew that she was going to have to do better to convince her conservative older sister Juliet to accept her decision to participate in the national teenage beauty contest. But how? She had done and said all she could. Now all she could do was wait to give her sister time to mull it over, but Eve was never big on long waits. Ten minutes was like a year, especially when it came to her dream.
The problem was, Julie didn’t appear swayed one way or another. It might as well have been a year.
“All right,” Julie conceded with her hands on her hips. “‘Miss Teenager’ has to have talent. That’s fine.”
This brought a smile to Eve’s face. Yes! She was halfway there, she could feel it!
“Now,” continued her sister unperturbed, “May I see the pictures you submitted?”
The question came like a hammer tossed at a pep rally, forcing Eve back into the dining room chair. Of course Julie would ask that! Everyone knows that an application to a beauty contest should contain pictures of the model.
“The pictures?” Eve asked hesitatingly. “Oh… you mean the pictures…?” Backed into a corner, Eve resorted to the stereotypical survival instinct of the blonde species: when in doubt, feign stupidity.
Julie wasn’t buying it. “The pictures…” She said softly yet irritatingly slowly.
Eve sprang from the chair and bolted upstairs to her room. Julie followed casually, almost pretentiously, up the stairs. As Eve rifled through every corner of her room, Julie leaned against the door frame with her arms crossed.
Eve felt her sister’s glare on her back like an ocean wave slapping against the rocks.
“I was sure I put them in my handkerchief drawer,” Eve declared, rummaging through her socks and intimates. As she did so, her heart pounded. What was she going to do? Was it possible to run down to the photographer and come back with a new photo of herself before Julie blinked?
Sweat formed on her brow. Eve was checkmated and she knew it. “Maybe they’re lost… or something… I guess.”
Part 4: Believing in the dream
Mon, 06 Sep 2021 04:01:10 GMT
Description: With the slightest ray of hope that Pops and Juliet might give her permission to join the Miss Teenager contest, Eve is filled with optimism. Now she is imagining herself there, and even beyond the contest, becoming a famous actress one day.
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 4.
There was no stopping her now. Once Eve had broken the news to Juliet and Pops, it was like a geyser of hope, gushing forth from her heart like a spring of optimism. The little town of Devon was barely a blip on the map of New England, but Eve would represent it well. Yes, twenty years ago, there was barely a water pump in town. Now look at it. Swelling with pride for a contestant of their very own in a national beauty contest. She had the potential to go all the way to the top, to the moon and back. At least, that was the way Eve saw it.
Of course, it was much more than representing her town. It was the allurement of the prize.
“‘Miss Teenager’ gets a trip to Europe,” Eve gloated, “and scads of presents, besides a contract in a movie…”
She was floating on cloud nine. Not at all afraid to come out of the locker of her tiny town. Two, three, four, tell the people what she wore! Flashes of cameras and hundreds of people nodding with approval as she strutted down the catwalk in her yellow polka-dot bikini. Not at all afraid to come out in the open.
Julie was quiet, her brow furrowed. Eve could feel her older sister’s disapproval from across the room like a bucket of ice dumped down her shirt. Still, Eve’s smile would not fade. Oh, Eve, the director of the film would say. You’ve done such a remarkable job on your first day of shooting that we’ve decided to move you up from sign girl number three to the lead role to replace that Audrey Hepburn. And there would be strawberries in her dressing room and dozens of roses from admirers…
A word from Pops brought her back down to earth. “How many girls in this shindig, honey?” he asked from behind his newspaper on the living room couch.
Eve was ecstatic that her father was beginning to show even the slightest bit of interest. Much more than she could say for her sister.
“I don’t know exactly, Pops,” Eve replied. “Probably hundreds, but I have a feeling in my bones – this one’s tailor-made for me!”
Part 3: Defending her position
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 04:23:44 GMT
Description: Eve's news to her older, conservative sister that she has entered a beauty contest has been met with sizable apprehension, but Pops strikes to the heart of the matter.
PART 3. The Miss Teenager Pageant.
Eve could tell that her news had stunned Julie. Like an egg tossed at the door of the household that didn’t participate in trick-or-treat. Like the cat that expected fish for dinner and got beer and pretzels. This was a shock that Julie would need to process.
For one brief moment in time, Julie had lost control over protecting her baby sister, and to take it back, she demanded answers. She got up in Eve’s face. Before Eve could say another word, tensions had suddenly escalated faster than a military coup in Caesar’s court.
“Go ahead,” Julie said. “You entered a ‘Miss Teenager’ contest and…”
Suddenly Eve was a soldier on the battlefield, boldly proclaiming that a strike was imminent. She decided to draw first blood.
“And I won!” she exclaimed. She was holding nothing back now. This was her dream on the line.
“I mean I won in our town,” Eve clarified.
There was no reason to blab that she would represent the whole town at the contest if she were selected. The day she had learned that she had been chosen out of a handful of other teenage girls to be Miss Devon was a day she would remember for the rest of her life. Now she had a chance to be in a national beauty contest. The excitement of that possibility was going to cause her heart to burst through her chest if she didn’t say anything. All she really wanted, maybe all she ever wanted, was just for Julie to be proud of her.
“Julie, aren’t you absolutely thrilled!” she exclaimed with jubilation.
Juliet softened briefly. “Depends,” she conceded. “Is this one of those bathing suit jobs?”
Eve had struck gold. Julie was on board. “Not just bathing suits, Julie,” Eve explained with wide triumphant eyes. “But you’ve got to prove you’ve got real talent, too.”
Pops had been listening, his paper still open to the sports section that he hadn’t glanced at since Eve had floated in the house. He would throw in his two cents, yes, but he was on an entirely different level. He struck to the heart.
“Those noises I heard in your room – and all that crying…” he began. “Did that come under the head of talent?”
What was she to say to that? It had not been long since Misha had returned to his home country and left Eve heartbroken. Yet he was gone now. Doting over him was uncalled for and superfluous. No matter what she did, it wouldn’t bring him back to her. He had made his decision to go. Besides, it was his home, his world, the place where all his dreams were waiting for him.
All of her dreams were right here. She could pretend well. She always had. Maybe now those tears could be categorized the same.
“Of course, Pops,” Eve replied. “My forte is acting, you know that.”
Part 2: The courage to be yourself
Wed, 01 Sep 2021 04:17:48 GMT
Description: Eve must share her dream with her conservative family, and she couldn't be more nervous. Will her family accept the dream that she has been secretly passionate about for months?
PART 2. The Miss Teenager Pageant.
In a family of white-bread, persnickety fuddy-duddies, Eve Jones liked to think that she was more whole wheat or rye. It wasn’t their fault, of course. Eve knew that Pops and her older sister Juliet, whom she affectionately called Julie, were two peas in a pod when it came to bourgeois traditionalism and keeping things in the order that the universe literally “meant” things to be kept in. It was just that Eve never fit into that mold. She was the eccentric, capricious, out in left field oddball in the family from the get-go, and she was kind of proud of it.
Beginning in junior high school it must have been, or maybe earlier – no, much earlier – Eve was the rebel who broke all the rules. Julie, whom she dearly loved and respected, was a decade older and always had one piece of advice or another that went against the grain of what Eve wanted to hear or believed was good for her. Julie was the mayor of their town, not the mayor of her life! Why couldn’t she just step down from her obstinate antediluvian throne and see things from her outlandish sister’s point of view?
Today was one of those days when she wished with all of her heart that Julie would.
How would Eve break the news? This was something she had become hysterically passionate about for months. She recognized, however, the unspeakable importance and life-changing potential of this dream, and she knew she could not hope to accomplish it without the support or permission of her family.
So today, as she stepped into her home, she was going into battle, the war to sneak behind their conservative defenses and convince them that her dream was worth it. Hadn’t Pops always encouraged her to dream big?
Eve sprang into the house with her usual flippant gaiety and charm. “Umm… Everybody cheerful and in a mood for a grand and glorious surprise?” she asked.
Pops looked up from his newspaper that he was reading on the couch. He was all ears. Whenever Eve said the word “surprise,” the whole household stopped freeze-frame.
Julie came in from the kitchen carrying a pot and wearing an apron. “Experience tells me trouble’s afoot,” Julie said. “Get to it, li’l sister.”
Eve pulled out the envelope that she had grabbed from the postal carrier before he had even had the chance to come to the driveway and deliver it. She had sprinted away from him and was already tearing into the envelope when he had shouted after her that her family had more mail than that and to come back and get it. But Eve hadn’t heard a word. What was in the envelope was the rest of her life.
“Well, you see,” Eve said, holding the precious envelope, “there’s this ‘Miss Teenager’ contest they’re running, and Shorty and Deirdre – and me too – thought wouldn’t it be fun…”
“If you decided to enter?” Juliet interrupted with astonishment. “Oh, no, Eve – you didn’t!”
Clutching the envelope to her heart, Eve grinned broadly. “Oh, yes, Julie – I did!”
Wed, 01 Sep 2021 03:58:27 GMT
Description: In the first episode of the Miss Teenager Pageant, Eve Jones is dropped off at home by her best friends, filled with apprehension that she must tell her family her big secret. Today feels like the first day of the rest of her life.
PART 1. The Miss Teenager Pageant.
Have you ever teetered on the edge of making a crucial decision and felt all alone? Like you were walking on a tightrope between two steep precipices without a balance pole to keep you steady and you just couldn’t help but look down? It’s not necessarily worrying about falling that paralyzes you with fear. It’s looking down.
That was exactly how Eve felt when she stepped from the car and gazed toward the house. Her heart hammered, her pulse raced. This was not the way she had planned to do it. Shoved to the front by peer pressure, that’s what this was.
Shorty sat at the wheel and grinned almost mockingly. “You’ll have to tell them sooner or later, Eve – so get it over with!”
Eve’s mind was already inside, imagining how the conversation might play out. The churning in her stomach reminded her that the task ahead was treacherous. What would she say?
“I suppose so…” she replied back hesitatingly.
Eve exhaled hard to calm her nerves. Her head whirled back and forth from the house to the car. Shorty was here. So was Deirdre. They might be of some help, if only for moral support.
“You wouldn’t want to come with me, would you?” Eve inquired. “Maybe I’ll do better with an audience?”
Shorty was already pulling out of the driveway. He shouted back over his shoulder, “No, thank you, pet. This is strictly a family affair – and I’m not even a kissing cousin. Ta-ta.”
“And you call yourselves friends,” Eve muttered as Shorty’s MG roadster disappeared down the driveway.
She would have to do this alone. But alone, she would.