A Corpse In a Teacup Page 0,1

her a leering smile full of gold-rimmed teeth and helped her push it past Tuesday. The blond’s cart boasted as many bags as Tuesday’s, but when she arched her back to show off her implants to advantage, the driver tripped over his feet to help her get them on board.

The driver finally closed up the van and took off in a cloud of exhaust, leaving Tuesday coughing into her arm. She positioned her overflowing cart as a roadblock to prevent the next crush of passengers from getting in front of her. Then she fanned the perspiration filming on her forehead.

The climate change jolted her. At seven a.m. Southern California was still twenty degrees warmer than Darling Valley. She slipped off her purple faux monkey fur shrug and stuffed it in her tote bag. Her traveling costume was making her sweat: striped yellow and black corduroy genie pants and a Rolling Stones World Tour tee shirt with a chartreuse leopard scarf. Understated she knew, but anything more fun would have been lost on the business class. Corduroy was great on the plane; she always froze when she flew. But not so good in SoCal’s sweltering heat. She unwound the scarf from her neck and tied it on the handle of her signature oversized and overstuffed tote. Olivia always said Tuesday was the only person she knew who packed to go to the supermarket.

While she waited for the next shuttle, she pondered Holley’s text. What could she have meant by her message? The girl had a vivid imagination. She insisted it was her instrument that helped her create her characters. Tuesday thought Holley was a little off the grid, which was saying something considering some of the characters she called friends. Tuesday assumed someone had bumped into the actress at the craft table, outrun her for the port-a-potty on the set or committed some other innocuous insult that offended her client’s sensitive feelings.

There was an upside and a downside to being Holley. She was every director’s first choice for cult and genre moneymakers. Currently, she had the starring role in a movie about time traveling aliens. The downside of Holley was that she called them alients. Tuesday didn’t completely trust her interpretation of reality. She pondered the text and decided Holley probably thought the alients were after her.

Her cell phone rang mid speculation. “Hi, Holley. I’m in airport shuttle hell in Burbank. What’s up?”

Holley’s voice quivered on the edge of tears. “I need to see you, Miss Tuesday.”

“Honey, I keep telling you, it’s just Tuesday. What’s going on? You were joking about someone trying to kill you, right? I thought everything was going great on the set and you were seeing this new guy?”

She fished her oversized sunglasses out of her tote with her free hand. Trying out the Jackie O look.

“Miss Tuesday, it’s not about the alient movie. I went to a casting call for a new project that’s just been green lighted. But everybody has to audition. I thought I didn’t have to do that anymore. You know with starring in the Vampire movie and all, but my agent said to swallow my pride and read for the part. I’m a pilot on the last plane out of an earth destroyed by zombies. You know, a strong female role like you’ve been telling me to go after.”

“I thought zombies were so 2012?” Tuesday had to pee. Where was that shuttle?

“This has a twist. They’re vegetarian zombies.”

“That’s a twist all right.”

Tuesday gave the evil eye to a couple trying to get in line ahead of her. She covered the phone with her hand.

“The line starts behind me, not in front of me.”

The couple grumbled to each other, but circled in back of Tuesday as she resumed her call.

“So what happened?” Tuesday saw the next van approaching and inched her cart closer to the curb.

She heard Holley suck in a deep breath. “Well! I did some of my best work. The director said I was a shoo-in for a call back. So I’m driving home, on cloud five, you know?”

“It’s cloud nine, but go ahead. Honey, I gotta wrap this up. My van is coming. Can we talk at the Café? Let’s meet there.”

“Miss Tuesday, wait. On the way home I got a call. I don’t know who it was, but he said if I didn’t drop out of the zombie casting call he would kill me. I’m afraid to leave my house.”

The van pulled up and the driver hustled Tuesday to