I was packed into the most expensive beaded gown that I'd ever been packed into. With my knees bound together, I hop-skipped up the wide steps to the vast glossy stage. I was accepting my 1976 Celluloid Intelligentsia award for best supporting actress in a comedy. The comedian host made a face at me like it was too amazing an upset to be true. I was now the world's biggest sex change star. I wanted to bolt the other way. I wanted to run to the bathroom. I kept saying to myself, "I really am worthy," though I didn't quite believe it.
Smiling graciously, I seized my award. It was far heavier than I'd expected. I felt the big block of metal slip through my greasy fingers. It caught against a press-on nail, which for a sickening moment I feared might pop off and fly across the stage. I turned to the crowd that was so big I couldn't see anybody. In my distinctive voice that could be a bit like a frog, I went into a gushing litany of heartfelt thank-yous to those craftsmen who'd made me clever, beautiful, and almost always in focus.
The instant I was backstage, an incredibly beautiful young woman with the most ludicrous cotton candy hair skedaddled up to me. She grabbed my award and said, "We need this back. It's not your real award."
I questioned her. "What?"
"You have to return this. It's just a prop. We'll send you your permanent one. Let go! See? We'll get you one with your name stuck right there!"
"Huh?" I didn't hear her. I was so out of it. I was high on myself. I thought she was trying to steal it. Of course I held on for dear life. My nails popped all over the backstage floor as we both jerked this way and that with it. Then a heavy cinderblock fell from high above and struck the beautiful woman on the head.
I'd been a fool to think she'd been brainless.
Lights started falling onto the floor with explosions of glass. Sparks showered down,igniting the dust on a curtain. A man in a tux ran by. He was screaming and holding his bloody forehead. If he were a big movie star, I couldn't tell. One end of a long metal catwalk dropped down and swung out and hit the backside of the set. It ripped a swath out of it. As it swung back in, the comedian host of the show was stuck to it. He dragged across the backstage floor. There was blithe applause from out front. The comedian host pulled himself off the catwalk and scrambled to get back on stage, but the fire curtain that sealed the stage away from the audience dropped like a guillotine. He was knocked on his belly. The audience screamed in alarm. All was dark backstage until rows of ceiling work lights finally clicked on. I looked up and spotted a man in a yellow leisure suit in the ropes. He was dropping, slowing his descent by keeping himself tangled in them. When his feet finally touched the stage floor, I saw that he was very ugly.
He pulled out a pistol and shot at a charging security officer, stopping him dead in his tracks, if not killing him. Then the ugly man quickly turned and looked straight at me. His eyes were cold. I was mortified. I watched his finger squeeze as he fired his gun deliberately at me. The bullet was stopped by the award that I wouldn't let go of. He aimed and fired again. I was hit in the shoulder but didn't feel it yet. I just stood like a dummy. I must have been hoping someone would yell, "Cut!" They didn't. He aimed again�"he fired again. I dropped the award. I gasped in indescribable pain as the award crashed down on my pedicure. When I looked at the gleaming block of metal on the floor, I could see two bullet dents in it. The man aimed at me again and all I saw were his tiny mean eyes.
Then, like one of those science fiction movies that have a budget, several men stormed in and shot the ugly man with strange long guns that set off electrical bolts. The man convulsed and fell. As people still ran around screaming, more curtain dust flashed briefly into flames. The men in black grabbed the electrocuted man and dragged him away, while the colorful "Singing While You're Swinging" backdrop fell over all of us like a long parachute. I somehow just stood there under the crinkled blue sky.
When I woke up, I was being wheeled through a white tiled hospital shower room. I was still dripping with water as I was being shoved off to somewhere else in a wheelchair. A grinning doctor stepped up to me and handed me a glass of champagne.
"Congratulations," he said.
"Bless you," I said, grabbing the glass. Then I grabbed the bottle. The bullet was dug out of my shoulder on local anesthesia. I was awake so the cops could ask me impossible questions. I meant to ask, "How did I get shot?" But it came out, "How did I get the award?" A frowning lady cop shook her head like I wasn't anybody, and hadn't deserved either.
*****
The next morning, I felt so sick that even the gravity was horrible. As I sprawled on my best friend's couch, toes and shoulder bandaged, I moaned, "I've been shot, I got the award," over and over. I wasn't sure which was more significant. The champagne headache didn't help.
Andernach looked down at me and finally said, "Soon you'll be getting residuals enough to pay for your own apartment. Love it!"
I nodded to agree. I said, "Now the studio jerks won't be able to come up with reasons why my run-away hit isn't making any real moolah." I randomly flipped off the room with my middle finger as if the studio heads were all there. The phone rang. Andernach did a lame two-footed pirouette and then plopped the phone on my lap.
It was Mom. She said, "Hey stinker. Why did everything go to hell just after you were on? How do you do that?"
"I dunno."
"And why do you think you were the only one in that film to even get a nomination?"
I thought fast. "Um, because while I was on the set, I think I was the only one to pass up the maryjane. So, I was the only one who wasn't assuming that things were funny."
"You were a hoot," Mom agreed. "You looked genuinely bewildered. You looked downright constipated. I couldn't stop laughing at the look on your face."
"Thanks, Mom. I think. I thought I was pretty."
"You are, when you aren't looking so lost. And, you were just as lost on the award show last night. It was as if you were the one who made all hell break loose."
I couldn't tell her I had made all hell break loose. It was me that was the target of that man's gun, though I wasn't sure about the details. I wasn't a sleuth.
Mom said, "You must be terrified. That gunman may be after all you show biz women. I'm glad my TV's black and white. They say your dress was an awful shade of tan that made you very rude. They said that if it wasn't for the sequins you would have looked like you weren't wearing anything at all."
I said, "It was expensive. So it was OK." My stomach flipped, recollecting all the other mysterious murders around me in the past year. I wondered what their pattern might be. It was certain now that I was the psycho killer's next target. And his final target. I looked over to see that the apartment door was chained.
Mom continued, "Back when I saw your movie, everybody laughed at your name when it finally came up in the opening credits. They just couldn't believe you were in such a real movie. Not after all that incompetent trash you've been in. God you've made some bad movies. So when your name came up on the screen, everybody laughed. Except me of course. I saw your name up there and I just was so proud of my little… my little… girl. But then the movie started. Then you really stole the show. You just looked so turned-around… just ready to bump into things."
"Mo-om!" I lost patience. I was now a star. I was somebody who'd been so grandly awarded the top prize and then shot. So I finally felt like I had some sort of power. So I forced the chat short with, "Bye, time for my bullet hole to be looked at again."
Andernach and I did indeed look at my bullet hole again, since a real bullet hole looks so much more horrible than a movie bullet hole.
"Eeew!"
"Gross!"
'I'm gonna throw up!"
"I'm going to die!" Then I re-read the Movieland Nova and Slanderbox.
They were the big competing trashy tabloids. They told me all about
what I'd just attended. I was so happy that my snapshots were larger
than anybody else's. That was probably because I was the underdog sex
change star that had been shot. Also, my mascara was dripping. I looked
like I just fell out of a big plane crash in a very hot jungle. "What's
more important," I asked Andernach.
"Getting this award or getting shot?"
"Both," he answered without a second thought. "Love it!"
I double-checked again to make sure the front door was chained against the psycho killer. I made sure my very sharp fondue fork was still at my side to protect me lest he push his way in. It was. So I closed my eyes. I tried to remember how I got to this place of such big celebrity and mortal danger.
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