It was sometime after seven on a Saturday evening, maybe they had closed for the weekend? I turned and looked around, trying to see if anyone else were moving anywhere in the complex.

We kept shooting until we started to lose the light, and Rusty called a halt a bit before seven. By then, I wasn’t on so much of a high and being glued into a costume had definitely begun to lose whatever appeal it might seem to have. I needed to get back to Wardrobe and use the solvent to release me from my Space Babe persona.

I didn’t relish a long walk in my high heels but Doug and his convenient golf cart seemed to be nowhere in sight. The Melrose Studio lot is huge and the East Gower set is easily two or three normal city blocks from Wardrobe. The skimpy space bra didn’t provide much more than minimal support, even being glued on, and I’d been literally bouncing around all afternoon. I wasn’t always aware of the movement but the crew sure seemed to notice!

They were beginning to stow away lights, reflectors, booms and such, and I was kind of in the way, so I scooted around the false front on the north side and looked across the expanse of trees and undeveloped scrubland toward the administration and support building complex closer to Santa Monica Boulevard.

I must have looked a bit forlorn because before I could say anything, Jesse (Mr. Delgado), had rustled up another cart and had offered an arm to help me into the seat. I thanked him and gratefully took a seat, wondering vaguely what had happened to Doug, my earlier chauffeur.

“What do you think of Celestia as the name of your character?” Jesse asked as he worked the controls to get us moving. This had been a point of discussion between he, Rusty and Todd all during the test shoot with kibitzing from the crew.

“Well,” I hazarded carefully. “It’s better than ’Space Babe’ or ‘Bimborella,’ (which had been the suggestion from one of the gaffers). It sounds…” I became aware of my cutesy new voice… “Celestial?” I finished a bit lamely, managing with not more than a tiny bit of lisp. Sheesh.

He laughed. “Hmm… Maybe Celestial could be the name of your ship?,” he added after a moment, taking a 90 degree turn at what was probably a higher speed than was safe.

“Eep!” I eeped, grabbing at the hand brace, and feeling my curvy parts jiggle and sway, straining against the glue.

“Sorry,” he apologized, apparently to my chest. “USSFS Celestial?” he asked, almost a non-sequitur.

I giggled. “I’ll never be able to say that! What do the letters mean anyway?”

“United States Space Force Ship, I guess,” he answered.

“I thought I was supposed to be from another galaxy or something? And isn’t there a real Space Force, like a government or military?”

“You’re right,” he noted glancing at me then swerving around a tree in a big concrete planter. “Whoops!”

I clutched the safety bar with one hand and gripped the front of my seat with the other. Who gets killed in a golf cart accident? I wondered.

He didn’t seem at all perturbed. “Star Force then, sounds better anyway,” he decided.

I resisted an attack of hysterical giggling. “What planet am I from?” Wait. Was that what I meant to ask?

Jesse laughed. “Good question,” he said. “So the ship is -uh- United Galaxies Space Force Celestial -uh- and….” He trailed off, thinking.

“Nothing’s written in stone yet,” I noted.

He grinned. “How could it be? We don’t have a script.” He paused, considering. “Not that we haven’t started filming without a script before. “Two Girls and Three Days in Cancun, never did have a script. And that one actually made money.”

“I bet,” I said, though I had never heard of the picture. Some of the Delgado movies only played in small movie houses in the middle of the country, or even only on cable channels available in motels. “But don’t all of your movies make some money? How could you keep making them if they didn’t?”

“It’s a trick of accounting,” he explained. “Or maybe just bookkeeping.”

“Huh?” Aren’t those two the same thing?

“If I’ve got buns in rows,” —what an image— “from Tucson to Halifax, I can sell Jujubes to the rubes and eyeballs to local quacks and shysters and make my money that way. Even if the take at the window is less than it cost to print the fillum.”

I took a moment to realize he meant concessions and onscreen advertising then mentally stumbled on the last word he had used.

“Fillum?” I blinked. He’d definitely lost me there and I began to think it had been deliberate when I realized he was grinning at me. And not watching where he was going!

Some random production assistant had to leap out of the way as Jesse drove us off the apron of concrete surrounding one block of buildings and up over the lip of another. Wump! Bump! Thumpity bang! And we were back on a smooth surface. I’d lost my grip on the safety brace and just managed to stay in my seat, apparently by clenching the muscles in my big round butt!

“Wardrobe,” said Jesse, anticlimactically.

“This is my stop,” I said, and he laughed even though I didn’t see how that was funny at all.

“You are a delight to work with, Miss Jones,” he commented, taking my hand for a moment before letting me go so I could exit the Golf Cart of Doom before it hurtled off on another mission.

He waved at me as he drove down a short flight of steps and across what looked like a rose garden. I held a hand up and twiddled a few fingers at him before realizing I was still in character as Busty Young Ingenue and snatching my hand down.

Shaking my head, I turned and tried the door to Wardrobe. It was locked. I tried again. Still locked. I moved down to the next door, also labeled Wardrobe, and tried that one. Also locked.

“Hey!” I yelled at the door. “I need to get in there!” My regular clothes were inside, plus the bag Jack had given me to carry the stuff I would have in my pockets if I had pockets. My cellphone. “Hey!”

I went back and forth between doors, banging on them. I found another entrance labelled Wardrobe, this a pair of wide double doors. I banged on both of those, too. “Hey!” I squeaked, wondering if anyone could hear me inside, then wondering if there was anyone inside.

It was sometime after seven on a Saturday evening, maybe they had closed for the weekend? I turned and looked around, trying to see if anyone else were moving anywhere in the complex.

Crickets.

This is California so most buildings have covered walkways with doors on the outside instead of corridors on the inside; ramadas they’re called, probably from a Spanish word for mid-price motel. I could see a half-dozen buildings from where I stood and no one moving around any of them.

The sun would be going down in less than an hour, already the western skies showed the red-gold of a post-credits sunset ending. “Hey!” I yelled again, but no one answered.

What was I going to do? If I could find a phone, I could call Jack to come get me. I thought I remembered some pay phones near the Commissary, but had those been real pay phones, a rarity these days, or just more props? And where would I get fifty cents in coins to operate a pay phone?

And which way was the Commissary from where I was? I didn’t really know my way around the studio yet. I could head south to Melrose Avenue but all the shops that would be open late on Saturday were a mile or two east toward downtown.

And I still had my five-inch costume heels on. Ouch, I’d been on my feet for about eight hours already, it was surprising I wasn’t in agony. It would be a shorter walk north to Santa Monica Boulevard but wearing my skimpy costume, I might be mistaken for a working girl there.

And heck, I was glued into this thing. At least the bra part.

I perseverated. It means to repeat one’s actions meaninglessly, without purpose, avoiding making a decision. I dithered around the courtyard between the wardrobe offices and the next building for several minutes before deciding I heard music at one end.

For lack of a better idea, I headed that direction. Music might mean people and maybe someone would have a phone where I could call Jack.