Chapter 1 of 1
"In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky
waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in
the night-time red downtown heaven
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering
these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty
of our lives..."
--"In the Baggage Room" by Allen Ginsberg
When Cordelia came to Los Angeles, she brought only two suitcases with her. They were a stylish matched set, not quite Louis Vuitton, but definitely up there, and they were stuffed to the gills with every piece of clothing Cordelia imagined would be essential to the wooing of casting directors on what would no doubt be her quick rise to the rank of up-and-coming starlet. Most of this clothing was calculated to show as much cleavage, bare midriff, or back as possible while not looking tacky or desperate. Cordelia was not, and never had been, an idiot.
Tragically, her clothing was already a few seasons old, thanks to Daddy and his “alternative business practices” that the IRS took such a dim view of. Before packing for her departure from Sunnydale, she had made the decision to ruthlessly cull the most dated pieces, handing them off in a box to the Sunnydale Salvation Army and trying not to cry as she walked away. It was a complete tragedy, but it did make the packing go faster, so that was some small consolation. (Except for the fact that it totally wasn't.) Her remaining outfits still looked good on her, and she was counting on the fact that her sparkling personality and great smile would provide enough of a distraction. If that didn’t work, well – she’d have to think of something else.
"It's the new, improved Cordelia," she had muttered to herself while sorting clothing into piles – Keep, Discard. "Sleek, streamlined. Ready to take on the world. A great interview on Entertainment Tonight."
She made her escape from her sad little hometown without announcing her departure to anyone - not that anybody would have noticed even if she had shouted her intentions from the rooftops. In the aftermath of graduation, everyone was still shell-shocked by the smoking ruin that was Sunnydale High, by their dead or vamped friends, or by the fact that college was just around the corner. It was easy to leave without having to deal with other people getting weepy or sentimental. A small voice in the back of her head nastily inquired why she thought anyone would be weepy or sentimental at the prospect of Cordelia Chase, Social Leper, leaving town, but she ruthlessly silenced it. And so, perched gingerly in a Greyhound bus seat that surely could have been cleaner, Cordelia left Sunnydale without anyone on the platform waving as her bus pulled away into the humid California night.
***
Her arrival in L.A. wasn’t quite the triumphal moment she had been daydreaming about as the Greyhound grumbled its way down the freeway. While retrieving her luggage from the belly of the bus, she took a good look around, and saw only grime, a struggling palm tree, and poor people absolutely everywhere. This was definitely not the part of Los Angeles she had seen when visiting with her family. Everything seemed so…yukky. And badly lit. And poorly landscaped.
A friend of a friend of a friend had just abandoned her dreams of becoming a screenwriter, so she had at least managed to land a furnished apartment with a minimum of fuss. The rent was very reasonable, and although she was sure it would be small, she was equally sure that she would only have to stay in it for a few short weeks until she was on her way up.
She managed to cling to this optimistic point of view until her taxi dropped her off in front of the apartment building. The driver, his little piggy eyes barely visible under his greasy ball cap, leered knowingly at her as he unloaded her bags. They hit the sidewalk with an unceremonious thump.
"Going to be an actress?" His sardonic grin said that he had seen a thousand young idiots just like her, all equally pathetic. In a feeble act of defiance, she stiffed him on the tip, sneered down her nose at him, and turned her back to march resolutely into her new home. The effect was slightly spoiled by having to step over an unconscious wino in the doorway, but she figured she carried it off nonetheless. Huffing slightly, she bumped her luggage up two barely-lit flights of stairs and fumbled her way into her new home.
Which was, not to mince words, a complete and total pit. The previous tenant, that cursed friend of a friend of a friend, had apparently never taken a Home Ec class, because there was an oil slick on the countertops that rivaled Harmony when she forgot to use her cleanser. Plus, the fridge smelled like death, and she was sure she had been present when Buffy had beheaded a monster that looked a lot like the fungus growing in the bathtub.
Cordelia sat down on the extraordinarily saggy sofa and did her best not to dissolve into tears.
***
For the next month and a half, Cordelia was up early every morning. She picked out her clothing with surgical precision. Her makeup was flawless, engineered to match the role she was auditioning for, whether it was Dewy Ingenue, Beer Slut, or No-Nonsense Homemaker. She was out the door, she was on her way, she was professional. She smiled winningly, remembered names, and shook everybody’s hand with just the right amount of force.
By the end of the month, jobless and increasingly desperate, she found herself in sweatpants and a ratty Sunnydale High t-shirt, staring at the ceiling as she lay in bed at ten am. She had an audition at two, but who cared? She had smiled until her cheeks ached, flirted with every casting director in town, and all she had to show for it was one job as a background extra in a suntan oil commercial, a stack of business cards a mile high, and a small pile of baby quiches in her fridge, slowly congealing. In what she was now beginning to recognize as a weird quirk of L.A. culture, she was invited to parties almost every night of the week, even as some of the people doing the inviting seemed to look through her when she was sitting in the waiting room with dozens of other hopefuls. Drifting through these parties, doing her obligatory share of cheek-kissing and cheerful chatter, she soon realized that she was far from the only one surreptitiously stuffing rolls and tiny sandwiches into her purse. At one unbelievably swank gathering, she had bumped hands with just such a kindred spirit as they both reached for the crab puffs. When he looked away in embarassment, Cordelia was disturbed to realize that his ashamed expression was entirely too familiar. She had seen the same look in her own eyes too many times in the mirror recently.
That evening, still in the same sweats, Cordelia stared into her closet, not quite sure what she was looking for: a dress for tonight's party, or a secret tunnel back to Sunnydale. Her suitcases were in there as well, sitting patiently towards the back of the closet, silent and somehow comforting. She reached in, and tugged one out, flopping it onto the bed and unzipping it. Its empty interior looked a hell of a lot more promising than anything she’d seen in weeks. Maybe it was time to stop pretending.
She went to the party for lack of anything else to do.
It was an utterly fabulous affair, just like all the other ones. Another evening of pasting on a smile, and failing in her attempts to stalk casting directors, who were apparently possessed of some sort of supernatural starlet-avoidance radar. Another evening making small talk with other losers, wondering when she could inconspicuously get to the buffet table to pack away something for tomorrow’s dinner. Was this it? Would she give up tonight? Tomorrow night? The next? How much longer would she be able to postpone the inevitable?
And then she looked up, saw a familiar clifflike profile turning towards her, and with great and utter shock recognized the last person she expected to see in L.A. .
Chapter 1 of 1