Behind Closed Doors

“It’s just not working out with Chloe,” Raymond sighed in exasperation, running his masculine-manicured fingers through his mod hair cut.

“What if we drop the h out of her name?” Jennifer piped up; shouting her idea like it was the cure for cancer. “C-l-o-e looks more exotic and alluring.”

“No, we said before we would stick with C-h-l-o-e because it’s originally French,” Tom mumbled, reclining on his wheelie-chair with his legs sprawled on the oval conference table they were all posted around. “Don’t you remember the ad campaign with all the berets?”

“Oh yeah,” Jennifer sulked, sinking in her chair like a deflating balloon.

The conference room was silent as they all sat in varying odd positions. Raymond paced the room, hurried in his thinking. His hands had a free gym membership as they powered threw the workout of repeatedly going through his hair.

“Well, she’s blonde…” Oliver began to think out loud. “…What if we made her a brunette. It worked for Nicky Hilton.”

Raymond tightly closed his eyes, counted on, two, three, and re-opened them with a feeling of defeat. “Look people, Stephen here is still asleep,” Raymond pointed out, indicating to the dozing team member with his head on the table. “When he wakes up after one of your ideas… then it is a good one.”

Oliver, tired and getting increasingly agitated, leapt off his chair, and with a swiftness of his feet, rounded to Stephen’s location and lowered himself to his colleague’s ear and bellowed, “New hair-cut!”

With tremendous fright, Stephen jolted up unaware why he had new hair-cut ringing in his ear.

As the twitching Oliver began making his way back to his high, leather wheelie-chair, he muttered, “That good enough, Raymond?”

Raymond flopped down on his own designer-comfort chair, wallowing in the overwhelming failure that was the crux of this meeting; to turn around a starlet that had run out of her minutes left in the spotlight.

“Come on, Jen, you’re the only female on this team,” Tom sighed.

“So?” Jennifer scoffed. “What are you implying, sexist?”

“I’m just saying you should have some ideas. Chloe’s female, you’re female,” Tom squinted trying to justify his comparison.

“I’m sorry, just because I share the same gender as the nit-wit, does not give me more ideas than anybody else,” Jennifer huffed, thoughts running through her head of the ignorance of the male species.

Oliver joined in on Tom’s line of thinking, “But couldn’t you tap into the female psyche? Maybe we could make Chloe someone for women to feel they can relate to.”

Jennifer began shaking her head. “No, as a woman I find women who try to do that as fake. That never sells.”

Tom began groaning like he was in pain. “Well than how can we sell her?”

“Well, what if we make her anorexic? It made people able to tell the Olsen twins apart, and also gave Lindsay Lohan another storyline… of course until the cocaine,” Jennifer contemplated. “Should she spend a few days in gaol? Worked for Paris, she’s got more job offers now, and her “God” line worked well too.”

“I dunno. Do we want to be that dramatic with Chloe?” Tom asked uneasily.

“Uh oh, Stephen’s asleep again,” Oliver laughed.

“What do you expect? This chick sucks,” Tom said shaking his head.

“Maybe we should just get rid of her,” Raymond said flatly.

The room went silent.

“But it did take us a while to find another girl when we lost Tiffany,” Jennifer whispered.

Oliver stood up. “I say we just get her down here, play around with her look. My team is here, raring to go; they’ve been on call for the last six hours we’ve been stuck here talking about this dead-beat chick. Once we look at her again we might be able to come up with some slogans or something that might be able to get people noticing her again.”

They all looked at Raymond. Silence.

“It can’t hurt…” Tom whispered.

Raymond shrugged. “Let’s take a look.”

“Yes,” Oliver cheered. He began dialling on his mobile phone, then placed it to his ear, “Esmeralda, we’re on.”

Moments later, three tall, slender, fashionable women with techni-coloured bobs strutted into the conference room, stopping with catwalk-worthy poses. They appeared to be the stylist equivalent of Charlie’s Angels as they stood next to each other, one with hair brush in hand, one with hair straightener and the other with a can of hair mousse in an action position.

“Where is she?” Esmeralda, the “angel” in the front, asked with an unmovable expression.

“We’re calling her down at this very moment,” Oliver replied, walking over to the women and kissing Esmeralda on both cheeks. “Esmeralda. Sorry to keep you and the girls waiting so long. I have been brick-walled for a while.”

“Perfectly all right,” Esmeralda flicked her tightly fixed do and handed Oliver over the hair straightener. “We are here to do a job, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“Great,” Tom grinned, hoping for anything that could get them out off this mess they were swamped in.

Two burly security guards walked into the conference room, and then between them emerged Chloe.

“Chloe!” Tom exclaimed, so excited at the prospect that maybe, just hopefully, Oliver’s stylist team would be able to change her into something marketable.

Oliver rushed over to Chloe, grabbed her arm, and pulled her towards his stylists.

“Is Stephen ok?” Chloe asked concernedly.

Oliver stopped dead in his tracks, let go off Chloe and turned around. He marched over to Stephen, whose head was flat on the table, and slapped him over the head. Stephen jolted back up while Oliver was walking back to Chloe. As Chloe was handed over to the stylists, Raymond planted a strong cup of caffeine in front of Stephen.

“I was thinking something short and dark,” Oliver proclaimed, looking into a mirror as he stood behind Chloe.

“How about this,” one of the stylist with an electric-blue bob said, putting her hair up against the wanna-be superstar’s.

“Or this,” the other stylist beside Chloe said putting her bright orange hair next to her.

“Oliver, remember at the beginning when we did this I said I liked my long curls, and I’ve never been anything other than a blonde,” Chloe said timidly.

“Don’t talk; you’ll ruin the illusion,” Oliver said rushedly like his tongue was in a race with his mouth.

“Here Chloe,” Esmeralda started, running her hands through her hair. “This is the colour Oliver wants for your hair, a rich burgundy. But I took this idea with the fact you like your blonde, and so I have put blonde underneath,” she told, showing the bottom half of her hair as a platinum blonde. “And if we just twist your hair back like this, we can show you as a new you, but it can not completely cove up your original self.”

Chloe stared at the twisted colours in Esmeralda’s hair. “Umm, I don’t know. It’s very dark.”

“Well, if she likes her long curls,” the stylist with the electric-blue hair began, “we should keep them and die them jet-black.”

“And give her a super-dark tan,” the orange-haired stylist added.

“The new Christina Aguilera,” Esmeralda sighed happily.

“I’m not…” Chloe started, but was cut off.

She was cut off by Jennifer, who leapt off her chair and began marching towards Chloe and the stylists, “Who’s idea was it to give this chic willpower and make her think she has the right to be talking? Shut up Chloe!” Jennifer barked.

“Whoa, Jen settle,” Tom said, chasing Jennifer and grabbing her shoulders.

“Ok,” Oliver let out a deep breath. “Obviously style is getting everyone on edge. Tom, Jen, start splashing some ideas about.”

“I dunno,” Jennifer shrugged. “She needs an addiction. Heroin would probably work the best because it’s what got Nicole Ritchie famous.”

Oliver looked at Chloe’s chest, and called out, “Boob job.”

“Why does everything we come up with have to be so unattractive?” Tom huffed. “Don’t you remember we brought Chloe out, fresh-faced, to be something good to aspire to,” Tom said, playing with Chloe’s long hair.

“Hello!” Jennifer started getting aggressive again. “Hasn’t it gotten through you’re thick head that that doesn’t work! That’s why we’re here; good doesn’t sell.”

“Stop arguing, it’s a lost cause,” Raymond piped up.

Chloe turned around from the mirror, unable to keep her cool manner, and said angrily “And you, Raymond, you are meant to be my manager. I haven’t seen you manage a thing in months.”

“I didn’t produce you to think, chic,” Raymond replied flatly.
Raymond then looked back, sickened, “Oh my god, someone oil her up, she’s twitching again.”