A Stranger in the Concrete Jungle

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 in 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 exboyfriend 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 back-up 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 out," 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 come 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.