Page 85 of All That Glitters
She looked completely at ease, more at home in this grimy clubhouse than he’d ever seen her look on a pristine film set. She was wearing a simple t-shirt and jeans, but on her head was a black baseball cap with “Rif Raf” stenciled on it.
Craig was the first to spot Tony standing in the darkened doorway. “Tony,” he hollered over to him. “Look who decided to slum it and join us for a game of poker.” He nodded to Carrie. “And she’s beatin’ the pants off us.”
Carrie looked over at Tony and her face broke into a bright, genuine smile that lit her up from the inside. She wasn’t performing; she was just happy to see him.
“Hey, Harding,” she called out, reaching into a cardboard box and pulling out a matching cap. “The guys made us some caps.” She tossed it to him, and he caught it and put it on. “Our own official Rif Raf merch.”
Tony did his best to match her smile, but it felt forced and fake. He walked toward the circle of light, and she must have seen the storm cloud he’d brought in with him. Her smile faltered, her brow furrowing with concern.
“Oh, no,” she said, rising from her crate and walking over. “San Diego didn’t go well?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Did you talk to Debbie?”
“She wasn’t there, so I talked to her roommate, Veronica.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said Debbie’s going to France for some study-abroad program. She was out shopping for clothes.”
Carrie’s face looked like she’d been kicked in the gut. “Oh, Tony. I’m so sorry. Was it our picture?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Veronica wasn’t happy about it.”
“I’m so sorry, Tony. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
He shook his head. “No. It’s not your fault. You were just trying to help. I was the idiot who couldn’t tell her how I felt.”
“Come on,” she said, taking his arm. “Let’s go for a walk.”
She led him out into the cool night air, away from the warmth and the light. The city hummed around them, a vast, indifferent machine. They walked in silence for a block, past chain-link fences and warehouses sleeping under the faint orange glow of the downtown skyline. The silence wasn’t awkward; it was comfortable and respectful, a space for him to gather the words.
Carrie didn’t offer empty platitudes or easy solutions. She just walked beside him, a steady, silent presence. After a long moment, she spoke, her voice soft and thoughtful, as if talking to herself as much as to him.
“You know,” she began, her gaze fixed on the distant, glittering towers of downtown, “this place… this whole city… it’s funny what it does to you. The compromises it makes you think are normal.”
Tony looked at her, confused by the shift in topic, but he remained quiet, listening.
“I never told anyone about my childhood,” Carrie finally said out of the blue. “It was about as far from glamorous as you can get. But it was happy. I was happy. I grew up in this tiny, one-stoplight town in Tennessee. So small you’d miss it if you blinked,” she continued, a faint, ghost of a smile on her lips. “My dad owned an auto repair shop. A greasy, noisy place that always smelled like gasoline and hard work. The mechanics who worked for him were a lot like the Rif Raf guys. Loud, a little crude, with dirt under their fingernails that never came out. And they treated me like a princess. They’d stop cursing when I came in; they’d wipe their hands on a rag before they handed me a soda. They built me a whole swing set out of old tires in the back lot.”
She sighed, a sound full of a history he was only just beginning to understand. “But all I ever dreamed about was getting out. I’d watch old movies and see Hollywood, and it looked like magic. The glitz, the glamour, the mansions, the parties… all the glitter. That’s what I wanted.”
“I saved up every penny I made waiting tables, packed one suitcase, and moved here when I was twenty. And at first, it was everything I dreamed of. I was going to parties, and film sets, and hanging out on yachts, and I felt like I was living in a movie. But then I started noticing something. When people would ask me where I came from, what my parents did, that kind of stuff, I lied. Having a dad who owned a garage in Podunk Tennessee didn’t sound cool, so I made things up. And the part that kills me now when I look back, is I did this because I was ashamed of my dad and mom and all those guys at my dad’s garage who were so wonderful to me. They didn’t fit in with all the glitter I was surrounded by — the mansions that cost more than all the real estate in my entire town combined, the cars, with spare parts that cost more than my dad makes in a year. I traded the gold — the stuff that was real, the people who were always there for me no matter what — for the glitter.”
Carrie reached up and brushed a tear from her eye before going on.
“A couple years ago, I started to see that Hollywood’s glitter isn’t what it seems. It has a high price, and there’s a tarnish to it you can’t scrub off. I loved acting, I wanted to be an actor, but nobody would take me seriously. They saw a blonde, they saw a body, and they put me in a box. I went to meetings where producers would put their hands on my knee, and I’d just smile and pretend it was nothing because I thought that’s what you had to do. Each scumbag I let get away with it, each cheesy exploitation film I took… I told myself it was a stepping stone. But I was just chipping away a piece of myself each time. Itwasn’t a compromise; it was a surrender. I got jaded. I started building walls.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him, her eyes clear and fiercely honest in the dim light. “You were the first person I’ve met since I moved to this city who saw something else. You didn’t see a bimbo. You didn’t see an opportunity. You saw a partner. A person. You talked to me about stories. You reignited my excitement and made me feel like that little girl again, the one who believed in magic and miracles and the power of creating things. Not just being looked at.”
She gestured toward the distant, shimmering skyline. “That’s the glitter, Tony. The mansions, the Ferraris, the parties, the feeling of being wanted for the wrong reasons. It’s shiny, but it’s hollow. This place, it can be good for us. It can be amazing. But only if we’re doing it for the right reasons. To create that magic, to entertain people, to tell stories.” She looked him straight in the eye, and he saw his own reflection in their depths. “That’s the gold.”
Tony felt like the breath had been knocked out of him. He thought about his initial motivation, the articles about writers striking it rich, the dreams of a life like the one he’d only glimpsed in La Jolla. “I know exactly what you mean about the glitter,” he said. “I hate to admit it, but that’s what made me write the screenplay in the first place. But working with you, and with the guys, it’s become about so much more than that.”
“I know,” she said softly. “It has for me too.” A slight smile touched her face. “It’s hard to believe that being in a film where I literally got blown up and shot with condoms became my redemption.”
“Not exactly glitter, was it?” he said.
