No Wolves in Los Angeles

When Meghan Kowalski’s father read Little Red Riding Hood to his little daughter he was amused by the illustration of the big bad wolf in the bedtime storybook the family used. This showed a suave, smiling wolf dressed in a suit hailing Little Red Riding Hood on the way to her grandmother’s place.

“You might meet lots of wolves when you are older,” said Kowalska senior, as he thought that his Meghan might have inherited much from his mother who had been a beauty queen in her day.

“You mean there are wolves around here?” exclaimed little Meghan.

“No, no wolves now,” said her father. “I meant that you might meet them later when you are older.”

“There are wolves, then,” said Meghan, looking at the bedroom window in alarm, thinking that there might be wolves right outside.

“No, no, no wolves around here,” said Mr Kowalski, sorry he had made this adult comment. “There are no wolves in Los Angeles.” That was where the family happened to live. “None at all.”

This calmed little Meghan enough to listen to the rest of the story – a sanitised version with the grandmother locked in the closet rather than eaten – although she still found the wolf scary. As she grew up, however, she lost her fear of wolves in dark forests, especially as there were no forests near her up-scale LA suburb. Instead, she became absorbed in school and her friends including Connie Leighton, who also showed promise of being able to catch men’s eyes when she got older.

There were sleepovers and shared confidences which developed into confessions of secret crushes and talk about fending off unwanted attention from boys. Then Meghan took drama and was told that she could act. She also took singing lessons and thought she could sing. Connie took singing lessons and was told that she could sing. She also took drama classes and thought she could act. The two girls competed for the lead role of Blanche DuBois in the school’s production of Tennessee William’s classic A Streetcar Named Desire. Meghan won and turned the play into a triumph, much to Connie’s dismay. They competed in a local singing contest which Connie won hands down, wowing the crowd, with Meghan coming a distant fourth, mainly on her looks, much to her dismay.

Now each other’s nemesis the two girls competed for Prom Queen which, to Meghan’s fury, Connie won handily on a school-wide popular vote despite Meghan campaigning hard and having developed into a stunning blonde who was already getting regular modelling work. She had been discovered by a modeling agent at sixteen while at a street fair with her mother. The now not little Megan took the defeat so personally that she even told the principal that the election must have been fixed. This accusation enraged the Leighton family and embarrassed her father, who had to work hard to smooth over wounded feelings. He wondered what had happened to the girl who had to be reassured over wolves.

Both girls easily got into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts joining Connie’s older brother Ty, also a singer. Meghan dated Ty for a time, infuriating Connie who was still sore about the vote rigging allegation, then dumped him, which infuriated her even more. She accused Megan of deliberately breaking her brother’s heart. Meghan moved on to a good looking senior with acting talent she met during a staging of Macbeth, only for the boy to drop her in favour of dating Connie, whom he met during the musical theatre programme. Meghan accused Connie of deliberately stealing her boyfriend. Meanwhile, just as Mr Kowalski had warned many years before, both girls discovered that there were plenty of male wolves.

Soon after, Connie dropped out of college and all contact with Meghan in favour of fronting a band performing mainly covers in high schools, hotels and bars, anywhere there was an audience and a dance floor. That band eventually dissolved but Connie and the drummer found two guitarists with some original material. She had an affair and a hit single with one of the guitarists before the affair, fame and drugs tore the group apart, but not before an agent scouted her for a band to showcase material from a rising songwriter. For Connie could sing, and that counted for something in the music business. The first hit was helped by a video so salacious it had to be re-edited to meet the requirements of the censors and prompted a concerned call from Connie’s mother.

“It’s the music business Ma,” said Connie.

The video helped push that first single up the charts which was followed by another, solid hit by the rising star who found she had a knack for spotting potential chart toppers. Suddenly Connie Leighton was in the big time.

Meanwhile, the bank that Mr Kowalski had worked for as a senior executive hit major trouble and the stress of picking up the pieces, plus a lung infection, brought on a latent heart condition. His wife and two daughters, Meghan and the somewhat younger Madison, then discovered that Mr Kowalski had put the family’s fortune, plus money borrowed against the family home, into the collapsed bank. On top of this, a long-standing family friend and financial advisor also caught in the bank disaster responded to the crisis by stealing his client’s money, including Meghan’s accumulated modeling fees, and vanishing. Meghan’s father should have also warned his daughter, and himself, about wolves in the financial world.

The Kowalskis were abruptly reduced to a miserable two-bedroom apartment and to having to borrow from family to pay for a modest funeral. Meghan’s degree was abandoned in favour of full-time modeling work, and her mother was forced to take a sales assistant job in an antique furniture store. A keen golfer, Mrs Kowalski also had to give up her expensive golf club membership, declining a well-meant but humiliating offer from friends to pay her dues until she was on her feet.

Fortunately, Meghan was a modeling natural knowing instinctively how to work with the camera. She put off moving to the fashion industry capital of New York to see her mother and sister through the tough time, but remaining in the movie industry heartland proved an advantage in that she was handed a one-off role in a sitcom, for which she reluctantly took the name Clarise Chalmers.

“It’s branding,” said the agent she had at the time. “No one pays to see shows with a Meghan Kowalski in it, but they will pay to see a Clarise Chalmers.”

As acting and screen presence still counted for a lot in Hollywood, not to mention Meghan-turned-Clarise’s considerable beauty, the one-off appearance turned into a recurring role with one episode featuring a shower scene so salacious that her mother expressed concern.

“It’s Hollywood, mother,” said Clarise-Meghan.

She auditioned for the lead in a major treasure-hunting adventure film not expecting to get it and ended up with the unlikely minor part of a blonde barbarian queen which attracted critical attention. After that came a role as the other woman in a straight-to-streaming-services rom-com movie so syrupy that Clarise had trouble watching it. She acted well enough in another cheap film for the audience to suspend disbelief that a luminously beautiful young woman was somehow a dowdy, lonely New York café waitress.

Her mother and sister now out of poverty, Meghan finally moved to New York to do a season on Broadway plus modeling, sharing a cheap apartment with another actress who drove her crazy, then moved back to Los Angeles when she got her big break playing an international model turned evil mastermind. She trained for weeks with a female fencing grandmaster for a sequence where she duelled with the hero while in her underwear. A role as the girlfriend of a superhero led to a major part in a heist movie. Clarise had decided to show flesh on screen, within reason, and a steamy shower scene that raised questions about the film’s classification – which she did despite detesting her co-star - helped make it a box office smash hit.

Abruptly Meghan found that she had bypassed the long-slow grid of auditions to become a star. Offers of all kinds – financial, promotional, romantic, sexual and for media interviews – poured in. She fell out with her first, down-at-heel agent over accepting the lead in a remake of the Audrey Hepburn – Peter O’Toole 60s classic How to Steal a Million. The agent thought that the fledgling star should make another film that allowed her to show more flesh and offered more money, meaning a larger fee for him. Meghan proved to be the better judge of projects when the remake became a hit, and the other film bombed.

The rising star signed with a big management company that promised her the world, only for these promises to mean the company took bigger fees, in return for sending her endless scripts featuring empty-headed blondes that never got out of the shower. Meghan accepted that being blonde was part of the Clarise brand, but she wanted roles with more class than simulated sex in showers. She told this to the big agency executives who agreed, nodded vigorously and smiled then sent her more scripts with shower scenes, along with more modeling and endorsement work than she could possibly do.

A major distraction from these career and management issues, however, were very handsome leading men and drugs and partying. Meghan-Clarise never had any trouble attracting men but now they flocked around in packs howling. Hot, rich, successful, single men – at least they said they were single – drove her in expensive sports cars to parties in chateaus, super yachts, converted castles and plush apartments while talking of huge business deals and major movie roles. She discovered a previously unsuspected wild streak, which a rich, handsome man – preferably a Latin type – could bring out.

Meghan went swimming in the Seine in Paris with the cast of one film on a dare only to be fished out and fined by bemused French police.

“The river is being cleaned up, Mademoiselle Chalmers,” explained a senior Parisian police officer in perfect English, “but there is still too much pollution to permit public swimming.”

The Italian police were less tolerant of a similar incident involving the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where Meghan happened to be on a modeling assignment, as they found small amounts of drugs on some of the party. Fortunately, they did not find drugs on Meghan, but only because she was already high.

“You may be a rival in beauty for Anita Ekberg, Signoria Chalmers,” a senior Italian police officer told her in perfect English, referring to the classic scene in the 1960 film La Dolce Vita featuring that star cavorting in the fountain. “But too many tourists have been in the fountain since then. We will have to increase the fine.”

When Meghan’s invaluable assistant and best friend Mia fetched her boss from the Roman lockup, she found the star signing autographs and posing for photos with policemen.

Then there was the party in Meghan-Clarise’s fashionable serviced apartment in London where she was shooting the remake of How to Steal a Million. She invited a few friends but they, in turn, invited the wrong people, including top-end drug dealers, representatives of London’s underworld who wanted to meet Clarise-Meghan and members of two rock bands that happened to be deadly rivals. Mayhem! Two celebrities had a fist fight in the apartment’s spa pool, several groupies went topless while another high as a kite invitee emptied the magazine of a small pistol from a balcony into the nearby Thames, at which point the police were called. Meghan hid behind a couch with one of the groupies for the ensuing melee which involved five patrol cars, a police helicopter and the dog squad. One woman constable was slightly injured, a police dog bit a guest and ambulances had to be called for both the brawling celebrities.

“A father of one of our constables says there’s been nothing like it since the Stones’ tours, Ms Chalmers,” said a senior English police officer in a broad Midlands accent to a badly hung-over Meghan-Clarise still in her club dress the next day, “and we don’t want to see it again. Given what happened in Paris and Rome, I might also point out that this far downstream you need prior written permission to go swimming in the Thames.”

The incident prompted her mother to suggest rehab.

“I’m having fun, mother,” Meghan said.

But it was the party in New York that turned Meghan from a Diva into a Hollywood bad girl. As she told her mother later it wasn’t her fault that the enormous party in an apartment overlooking Central Park got completely out of control. She hadn’t organised it and only met the owner of the apartment on the night. All she had done was turn up with her billionaire boyfriend of the time. She did not know until interviewed by detectives the next day that two rival sets of gangsters also attended, all of them under the impression that they would have carnal relations with her although she had never met with any of them. Nor did she witness the brawl around the apartment building’s fountain which had to be broken up by police from several squad cars, and subsequent chase through Central Park involving mounted police officers. But because she was the highest profile celebrity at the party her name was mentioned prominently in all the news reports and the public, quite unfairly, came to believe that somehow she was behind the fracas.

Initially horrified by this turn of affairs Meghan found that her new reputation as a party animal (which had some justification) and Hollywood bad girl (which was unfair) meant a huge increase in the fees she could charge. This was helped by the fact that Meghan also had a sense of style that prompted comparisons with the late, great Audrey Hepburn. A bad girl with a sense of style is a winner on magazine covers. She bought a large house on the edge of Beverley Hills with a pool to match as a home and headquarters and gave money to her mother to buy a partnership in a fashionable antique furniture store.

All that extra money, however, also meant that consultants offering services of all kinds clustered around her howling for fees. She had PR consultants, styling consultants, tax lawyers, corporate lawyers, physical trainers and a very expensive group that managed all forms of social media for her. Meghan’s online profile needed managing, she was told, at a substantial cost. Then there were the website issues, security precautions and legal issues of one kind or another, some of them caused by the high priced consultants themselves who then wanted more fees to resolve them. Other sets of consultants handled whatever money was left over after the fees had been paid.

She invested money with one group, on the recommendation of a family friend. This collective of smooth-talking salesmen, as Meghan thought of them later, put all her money into a high-leverage, high-risk financial product which also happened to pay very high commissions to the salesmen. The product promptly failed miserably with the promoters getting to the airport only a step or two ahead of several Federal agencies. The salesmen got their commissions but Meghan never saw a dollar of her money again. She tried again with another group recommended by someone her mother knew. That group took big management commissions in return for thoughtfully losing only a part of her money – a loss they blamed on “adverse market circumstances”.

“At least Federal agents aren’t involved this time,” thought Meghan.

The death of her father and subsequent, brief poverty had marked Meghan more than she cared to admit, in that she wanted to keep the money she earned, but dollars seemed to flow out the door to buy services she did not really understand and did not know why she needed.

Meanwhile, Connie was developing her own reputation. She got back at a boyfriend who broke her heart by releasing a break up song that went to number one everywhere and forced the ex-boyfriend to undertake relief work in Africa. The singer moved to New York where she had the bad luck/judgment to date a rap artist who turned out to be insanely jealous. A chain of events which started with her exchanging a few, friendly words with the rapper’s major rival at a party culminated in a studio shootout and both men being rushed to hospital.

Connie’s sole contribution to the shootout had been to cower under a music control panel with a backup singer and her interaction with the rival had been entirely above board, but her boyfriend loudly blamed Connie, and the police interviewed her at length about his allegations before charging both men with various violent crimes. The singer then took her father’s very sensible advice concerning the boyfriend “to dump his arse” and move back to LA. There she bought a large house in Beverley Hills proper and filled it up with a floating cast of music industry wannabees and doubtful hangers-on who amused her.

The music diva dated a good-looking Hollywood producer who got her a part in a romantic comedy destined to go straight to a streaming service. Then she found out, to her horror and mortification, that the producer was not only very much married his wife confronted Connie at a swanky Hollywood party to accuse the singer of deliberately seducing her husband. Security had to intervene. This was all covered in excruciating detail by the media. Because the producer’s wife defended him with such force, Connie found herself cast in the role of husband-stealer.

“I had no idea he was married, Ma,” she told her mother later. “There was no ring, no wife at his place and he never said a word.”

Her mother believed Connie, but the wife proved better at lying than the singer at telling the truth. Far worse the romantic comedy bombed, with the critics making nasty remarks about the husband-stealer’s acting ability, and the fuss affected her music sales.

Faced with the need to rebuild her public image, and after taking advice from a major public relations firm, Connie started talking about the environment. She owned a jet for touring and saw no problem in also using it to fly to conferences and meetings on the environment to give her opinion on the issue, although all she knew of the environment was the view of her Mansion’s back garden from her bedroom window. To add some media spice to her declarations she thought to revive the old feud between herself and Megan-Clarise.

“Look at the rich movie star,” she told reporters. “What has she ever done for the environment?”

Meghan at first ignored this then took advice from the large public relations firm charging big fees – the same one used by Connie, although she did not realise this. The consultant also told her to talk about the environment.

“What am I to say?” she asked.

“Just say we should reduce emissions,” the consultant replied. “The media don’t seem to care much beyond that.”

Meghan thought that sounded too much like catch-up and that, for the fees she was paying, there could have been more creative thinking but she had no idea what else to say. While she was puzzling over this her assistant and best friend Mia declared that she wanted to go out to have drinks with a mega-rich Silicon Valley type. Meghan’s boyfriend of several months, another successful, good-looking-Latin film star type, was out of town for a few days and Meghan-Clarise had agreed to appear at a party thrown by one of the producers of her latest movie.

“But we have this party to go to,” she said.

“We’ll drop in for a drink and then go on to the party,” said Mia. “We can’t appear too early. If you come, he says he can get someone presentable to keep you company while he talks to me.”

“Urgh,” said Meghan, who had adopted high standards when it came to men. “A rich geek with a presentable friend. Are you really into this guy?”

“Never met him. It’s through friends of friends and a sort-of blind date but he says he wants to find out about the film industry. The upside is that he’s got three hundred million,” said Mia. She was about Meghan’s age, short and stocky, with a mop of curly brown hair and a girl next door appeal that meant she did well for herself in attracting men. “He’s gotta be worth talking to, no matter what he looks like, and it’s at that really ritzy club we were talking about.”

“I want to check out that place,” admitted Meghan. “I’ll talk to this presentable plus one for a while if you want.”

When they got to the club she wore a hood and sunglasses as she often did in public to avoid attention, but the man at the door still waved the two ladies through without question, directing them to the bar section. They found two men in a booth. One was obviously the mega-rich Silicon Valley geek and the other the presentable plus one, standing up and staring so intently at the screen above the bar that he did not turn around when the ladies came in.

Meghan thought that the plus one was not bad looking, tall with an athletic build, olive skin and a square jaw. Okay, she would talk to him for a few minutes if he ever paid attention. They sat down.

“I’m Hap,” said Hap, offering his hand. Clarise placed her hand briefly on Hap’s hand.

“Who’s your friend?” she asked.