The Blonde Theory

by Kristin Harmel

  “Wait here for a moment,” she said, pulling to a halt before we reached the dressing room she shared with several other minor characters on the show. Of course, I would never refer to them as minor characters. Supporting actors, Emmie called them.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as she opened a door off the hallway.

  “Shhhh! ” she hissed at me. “I’m just making sure the coast is clear.” She looked from side to side suspiciously, her blonde ringlets bobbing around her face, and slipped inside the room beside her dressing room.

  I sighed and leaned back against the wall of the hallway, crossing my arms. I was hungry, and it had been a long morning. I didn’t have time for Emmie’s dramatics today. She was always making a bigger deal out of things than she needed to. I mean, I guess that was her job. But I’m the complete opposite: practical and sparse in my antics.

  In a moment, an elated Emmie reemerged from the room, grabbed my arm, and pulled me inside.

  “It’s safe. C’mon,” she said. She flipped on the light, revealing a massive closet lined with racks and racks of clothes, shoes, wigs, and accessories. “Welcome to the Wardrobe Closet,” she said with dramatic flourish, gesturing around us grandly. I blinked and stared. It was what I’d always imagined Heaven would look like.

  The room seemed to go on forever. The walls were lined with shelves six feet high, filled with every color, shape, and size of shoe I could imagine. Clear cabinets were filled with a sea of denim in every shade, and endless racks were lined with hangers full of shirts, pants, dresses, skirts, and jackets in every color, shape, and size ever created. Carrie Bradshaw would have a field day here. Well, she would if she weren’t a fictional character, anyhow. I gulped and tried to appear nonchalant, although my little shopper’s heart was beating rapidly.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked, trying to sound grumpy instead of impressed. I refused to admit that I was trying not to salivate. “I’m hungry,” I said instead.

  “Harper,” Emmie said in exasperation. “Can you not think about food for, like, thirty seconds? We’re trying to get you outfitted for the Blonde Theory experiment.”

  “Outfitted?” I asked suspiciously, my gaze finally drawn away from the endless rows, shelves, and racks of beautiful clothes. I focused on Emmie with some reluctance. “What are you talking about? We didn’t say anything about outfits.”

  Emmie sighed, clearly exasperated with me.

  “Harper,” she began slowly, as if she were talking to a child. “In acting, the first step to being the part is looking the part. And you’re not exactly going to look the part in your clothes, are you?”

  I looked down at my body. I was dressed in a slim, pin-striped black Armani pantsuit over a crisp white blouse with Jimmy Choo stiletto pumps peeking out from beneath the slightly flared bottoms of the pant legs. I looked all business. My favorite necklace, a sterling-silver Tiffany heart on a slim silver chain, dangled in the cleft of my collarbone.

  “I can see your point,” I admitted reluctantly. Although I loved my clothes.

  “So I’ve taken the liberty of picking out several outfits for you,” Emmie announced. I just stared at her. She pulled out one of the sliding racks.

  “Smart Harper,” she said, grinning at me, “meet Dumb Harper.” She gestured grandly to the rolling rack.

  It was a veritable sea of acid-trippy tight pants, clingy dresses, halter tops, and shirts that looked suspiciously like bras.

  Oh no. I could not wear any of this. No way.

  “A tube top?” I asked skeptically, pointing to the first outfit that Emmie held up.

  “Yep,” she said proudly. “And don’t worry; everything’s a label.”

  I groaned. “Yeah, the label of ugliness,” I muttered.

  She rolled her eyes. “No, look.” She pulled out one of the dresses, a short, white, nearly transparent one. “See,” she said, showing me the tag. “Versace. And this one,” she said, replacing the white dress and pulling out a little turquoise number, “is Stella McCartney.”

  I quickly leafed through the rack, and indeed, nearly every item on it seemed to be from an expensive designer label. Not that I could imagine anyone spending that kind of money on these kinds of designs.

  “Emmie,” I said flatly, turning back from the rack to face her. A slightly ill feeling rose inside me as I tried not to picture myself in some of these dresses. “I would never wear any of this.”

  “Exactly,” Emmie announced triumphantly. “Harper Roberts, meet the new you.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, I was poured into a strapless fuchsia dress that was long enough to keep me from looking like a streetwalker but clingy enough in all the right places to leave little to the imagination. It followed the curves of my hips then flared out into a flowy tulip skirt that ended well above my knees. I frowned at myself in the mirror.

  “I look like a prostitute,” I groaned, knowing very well that I didn’t. Actually, I was ashamed to admit that I looked a lot better in the dress than I had expected. Not that I would say that to Emmie. I wouldn’t want to encourage her.

  “You’re exaggerating, Harper,” she said dismissively. “Besides, do you know any prostitutes who wear Dolce?”

  “I suppose I’m supposed to wear this to the firm dinner tomorrow night?” I asked wryly, ignoring the fact that Emmie was right about the dress’s label as I turned to stare at myself in the mirror from another angle. No, this was definitely not working for me. “You know, the dinner I don’t have a date for yet?”

  She laughed. She knew me well enough to know I was just trying to deflect attention from the real issue. It was my oldest trick.

  “I wouldn’t exactly recommend wearing this to dinner with the other partners, Harp,” she deadpanned. “I think that falls into the category of time off from The Blonde Theory in the interests of keeping your job.”

  “Great,” I said, rolling my eyes at her. “Lucky me.”

  Not that it mattered. If I couldn’t find a date—which was beginning to look like a distinct possibility—I’d be ostracized like a leper anyhow. Seriously. I had tried going stag before, and the stigma still hadn’t worn off. The implication, of course, when you showed up alone was that you were not actually capable of getting a date. In my case, this was true. But it’s not like I wanted my co-workers to know that. It was one thing to be an undatable loser. It was quite another to have the entire office know you were an undatable loser.

  “Besides, stop changing the subject,” Emmie said, swatting me lightly as I turned to look over my shoulder at myself in the mirror. “This is about the dress you have on, not about your firm dinner. We’ll get you a date. And right now, you look hot.”

  Okay, so I did look hot.

  If you were into that whole slutty look.

  Which I wasn’t.

  But who knew I could pull off trampy so well? Hmm, this was a new side to myself.

  “I looked hotter in my Armani suit,” I said antagonistically. Besides, what did she mean when she said she’d get me a date? So now she was my stylist and my pimp?

  “Well, I think you look a little masculine in your Armani suit,” Emmie said with a grin. I frowned at her. “Besides,” she added, “you look dumber in this, and that’s the key.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you look hot, too,” said a deep voice from the direction of the door. Emmie and I both whirled around, startled.

  Framed in the doorway stood Matt James, one of the big-name stars of the show, a thirtysomething actor with jet-black hair, sharp green eyes, a strong jaw, and boyish dimples. He played defense attorney Patrick Carr, the embattled Good Samaritan whose plotline currently had him embroiled in some sort of conflict with the mother of his identical twin brother’s baby. I’d never admit it to Emmie, but I didn’t catch The Rich and the Damned often, even with my new ability to TiVo it and watch it at night. I just found soap operas far-fetched, melodramatic, and boring. Imagine that.

  But the actors on them sure were cute. I had t
he uncomfortable suspicion that I was blushing.

  As for Matt James in particular, I was embarrassed to say that I’d had a bit of a crush on him—inconceivably illogical as that was—since we’d first met at one of the show’s wrap parties just after Peter and I had broken up. I had still been deep within my post-Peter depression and hadn’t been looking to date anyone at all, but I would have had to be blind to have not noticed Matt. I mean, obviously, a guy who plays a hunky lawyer on a daytime soap is going to be attractive. All of Emmie’s co-stars were. But there was something about Matt that struck me so deeply from the beginning, I turned into a blushing fool nearly every time he was around. And that was so not me. I usually stayed cool, calm, and collected no matter what. Matt somehow always seemed to turn my brain—and my knees—to mush just by existing in my general vicinity.

  Unlike the other actors on the show, most of whom struck me as stuck-up and kind of empty-headed, Matt had always seemed to have an unexpected depth. He sounded intelligent when he spoke. His eyes sparkled intently, and he tilted his head thoughtfully when he listened. He had a smile for everyone. His happiness and kindness appeared genuine.

  Then again, as I constantly reminded myself whenever I saw him, he was an actor. It was his job to make people think he was a genuinely good guy. I wouldn’t be fooled. There was no such thing as a genuinely good guy. At least not a genuinely good soap-star guy.

  Of course, it was ridiculous to have a crush on some random daytime soap actor. I had never even told Emmie about my attraction because I knew she would laugh at me. I knew she found him attractive, too, but she had dated another star on the show when she’d first started there—an actor named Rob Baker—and learned the hard way how difficult it was to work with an ex after a breakup. It still bugged her to see him around. She had vowed she would never date another co-worker. Easy for her to say. She never had a shortage of men throwing themselves at her away from the set.

  “Hey, Em,” Matt said cheerfully as he approached us, eyeing us warily as we dug through the wardrobe closet. He appeared to be smirking a bit, though I hardly noticed. I was trying desperately to control my blushing, but it appeared to be futile; my cheeks felt like they were on fire.

  “Well, what have we here?” he asked, turning to me with sparkling eyes and putting a hand on my elbow to hold me at arm’s length. His eyes ran up and down the length of my body, still clad in the skintight fuchsia dress, and I suddenly felt the urge to cover up. I crossed my arms and looked at him defiantly, giving him my best reserved-for-the-courtroom hard-ass glare—which, for the record, is a little hard to do when your cheeks are lit up like Rudolph’s red nose.

  “Nice to see you again, Harper,” he said with just enough of a glint in his eye that his words didn’t sound entirely genuine. “Nice dress.” Okay, now it was a full-out smirk.

  “Stealing from the wardrobe closet?” he asked Emmie, an eyebrow arched.

  “Not stealing,” she said defensively. “Just borrowing.”

  “Hmm,” Matt said thoughtfully, turning back to me, grinning like a little boy now. Emmie and I were both squirming uncomfortably, and he seemed to be enjoying every second of it. “Harper, with your hot-shot lawyer job and all, I’d think you’d have enough money to buy your own clothes. Or are you considering a career change?”

  “Shut up, Matt,” Emmie snapped, shooting him a warning look.

  “So what are you doing?” he finally asked, cutting to the chase. I tried to ignore the way his big green eyes sparkled with amusement as he looked back and forth between us. Big green eyes are my weakness. Well, one of my weaknesses.

  “None of your business, Matt James,” Emmie said. Uh-oh, she was full-naming him. She clearly meant business. I, of course, was staying silent, trying to think of all sorts of cold things—ice, the North Pole, sticking my head in the freezer—to cool my cheeks. This was beyond embarrassing.

  “Hmmm,” Matt said again, his green eyes twinkling with infuriating adorableness as he looked at us slyly. “And yet it strikes me that it is my business, seeing that I’m now inadvertently an accomplice in your little steal-from-the-wardrobe-closet scheme.”

  “Borrow,” Emmie corrected impatiently. “Borrow-from-the-wardrobe-closet.”

  “Ah,” Matt said, arching an eyebrow. “Borrow. Of course.”

  “Anyhow, it’s still none of your business,” Emmie said sourly.

  “It would seem not,” he said finally, looking back and forth between us. He grinned again and raked a hand through his thick, dark hair. “I have the feeling that when I find out about it, though, I’m going to get a kick out of it.”

  “There’s nothing to find out,” Emmie snapped.

  “Right,” Matt said. He winked at me and I forced myself to glare back at him. Glaring seemed so much classier than drooling. He smiled at me, apparently unfazed. “Okay, well then, ladies, I’ll leave you to playing dress-up. I’m due on Sound Stage Two. It seems that young Mrs. Cohen’s eighty-five-year-old husband is in a coma and she needs a lawyer to help her figure out how to legally pull the plug.”

  “Important stuff,” I muttered.

  “Ah, I knew you were listening,” Matt said, turning to me. “Apparently that dress hasn’t squeezed all of the brain cells out of you yet.”

  I made a face. He grinned back, his gaze even.

  “Just one more thing, Matt,” I heard Emmie say innocently beside me. There was something in her voice that made me turn and look at her. She was smiling in a way that made me suddenly uncomfortable.

  “Yes?” Matt asked, waiting expectantly.

  “What are you doing tomorrow night?” she asked. Suddenly, I realized exactly what she was leading up to. I opened my mouth to say something, but it was too late. Oh no. I felt my cheeks heating up again.

  “Nothing,” Matt said with a shrug. “Why?”

  “Harper has a firm dinner tomorrow night,” Emmie said, refusing to look at me because she knew very well that I was currently shooting death-ray stares in her direction. “She had this really hot, really great guy lined up to go with, but the plans just fell through.” She shot me a look, and I made a desperate face at her. She grinned. “Apparently he’s some big-shot lawyer in DC, and the president just called him away.” I rolled my eyes and shook my head, but Emmie ignored me. “Anyhow, it would be a shame for Harper to go alone. And I thought that maybe spending the evening with a bunch of lawyers would be great research for your role on the show. Do you want to go with her?”

  “Oh,” said Matt, looking temporarily unsure as he glanced at me and then back at Emmie. I felt an unexpected lump in my throat, and suddenly my knees seemed weak. I knew I was still blushing furiously. This was humiliating. He didn’t even want to go with me. Of course he didn’t. I was sure he had much better things to do than take pity on some frumpy lawyer who couldn’t get her own date to events. Emmie’s story hadn’t even sounded remotely truthful. Sheesh.

  “Actually, I’d love to go,” Matt said, turning to look straight at me, his green eyes boring into mine. I felt my eyes widen with surprise. “That is, if it’s okay with you, Harper,” he added cautiously.

  “Uh, yeah, it’s fine,” I said, caught totally off-guard. What I wanted to say was, You don’t have to come with me just because you feel sorry for me and because Emmie put you on the spot. But of course, I couldn’t say that. Emmie was grinning triumphantly beside me, I noticed out of the corner of my eye. I made a mental note to strangle her later. “But don’t feel like you have to come,” I said, suddenly defensive. “I mean, I can get a date on my own, you know.”

  Okay, so that just sounded childish. Not to mention the fact that it was entirely untrue. Embarrassing as this fix-up was, at least I’d have a date to the dinner.

  “No, I’d love to go,” Matt said kindly, a little too hastily to be believed. “Emmie’s right. It would be great research.”

  Despite myself, I could feel my heart sink. Of course. That’s what this was about. He could kill two birds with
one stone: He’d be the humanitarian of the evening for escorting the undatable lawyer to the dinner, and he’d also score some free lawyer lessons. It was Matt James’s lucky day.

  But I was too humiliated now to change my mind and turn him down. On top of that, I really did need a date.

  “Great,” I finally said softly. “Thanks.” I gave him my address and phone number.

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow night, then,” Matt said, turning back with a grin after he reached the doorway. “Oh, and Harper?”

  “Yes?” I asked cautiously.

  “Don’t wear that dress,” he said with a grin. “I don’t know much about being a lawyer. But I don’t think the senior partners would approve.” He winked. “See you tomorrow night.”

  Then, with a wave over his shoulder, he was gone, leaving me to stare after him openmouthed. Finally, I turned to Emmie, ready to tear into her.

  “Are you blushing?” she asked me suspiciously.

  “Uh, no,” I said. I was a terrible liar. I could feel my cheeks get even hotter. “Emmie, why did you do that? I’m humiliated.”

  Emmie just shrugged. “You needed a date,” she said casually. “And I’m sure Matt is happy to go with you. It will help him with his role. Besides,” she added, giving me a sidelong glance, “he owes me a favor.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed, because of course that would be stupid. “Of course. A favor.”

  “Okay, Harper, I know you’re in a rush, so we have to do this quickly,” Emmie said, snapping me back to attention. She looked wholly oblivious to what she’d just put me through.

  “Do what?” I asked, trying to snap out of the feeling-sorry-for-myself haze.

  “I have to teach you how to act like a dumb blonde,” Emmie said impatiently. “And we need to start right away.”

  “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” I asked, tugging at the top of my fuchsia dress, wondering why they didn’t build more support into these things. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like talking about dating anymore. I just felt defeated. But I suppose that was all the more reason to get to work on The Blonde Theory, wasn’t it?