He glanced at her, shrugged, then walked away, keeping his haughty, royal stance.
Connie, on the other hand, was eager to help and reassure her. “There’s really nothing to worry about. Enjoy your time here. This is California.”
“Nothing to get spooked by out here,” another cast member told her. “Don’t worry about it.”
Everyone she spoke to gave her the same reassurance. It was a safe place where nothing exciting ever really happened.
She headed back to the bar across the street to see what the people there might have to say. Maybe after a few drinks the people there would be a little more talkative.
“Hi,” she said as she sat on a stool hoping the bartender would remember her from the night before.
“Hey. Good to see you again. Another pretzel?”
Sonya smiled and shook her head. “I’ll just have a martini.”
“Good call.” As he turned his back to her to fix her drink, Sonya took a good look around.
Many of the same people who’d been there the night before were once again sipping the drinks and nibbling on snacks. How many of them had noticed the buxom blonde? Sonya smiled at the thought. The better question was how many of them hadn’t noticed Rhonda. The detective was the type of woman who turned heads on entering a room. Hardly the type to go unnoticed.
“You seem to get a lot of regulars here,” she said when the bartender set her glass in front of her. She took a quick sip of the drink.
“Keeps the business going,” he said, extending his hand out to her. “Seems like you may be our new regular I’m Bart, by the way.”
She looked curiously at him.“Bart the bartender? Is that your real name or, well, your stage name?”
He let out a loud and sincerely amused laugh. “No. Believe it or not, that’s my real name.”
Sonya extended her hand to take his. “Sonya.”She shook his warm hand. “I’m hoping to be around long enough to become a regular.”
“Opening this place just across the street from WUS studios wasn’t a fluke. The big guy knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Any big shot celebrities coming in?”
He shrugged. “Not that much. The big shots go to more exclusive, hoity toity places. You know, clubs you and I couldn’t get into.”
“I see what you mean.”
“But we do get some familiar faces. Like the actors you’ve seen around in plenty of productions, but you don’t know their names...that type of thing.”
“Like who?”she said out of curiosity and to keep the conversation going.
“Oh, let’s see. Like Mark Woods. He’s been in several movies, you know, playing the friend or colleague or neighbor. Then we had Maevis Cording...always playing someone’s secretary.”
“I see.”
“Were you hoping to cross some celebrity’s path here?”
Sonya laughed. “I don’t know. I’ll admit that being out here in Hollywood has been an eye opener. No doubt I would be girlishly starstruck...even meeting a lesser-known celebrity. And even though I’ve been cast in The Muse, this is all a dream that is incredibly hard to absorb.”
“The Muse. Yeah, I heard about that. So, you got a part?”
“They liked my voice,” she said, downplaying her own talent.
“I bet they liked more than that. You have one of those faces.”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced up at the ceiling. “Oh, how do they say that? Oh, right...a face the camera loves. You’ve got that face. Regal, yet approachable. A quiet sort of confidence that draws people in.”
