Excerpt of All I Want? by Isabel Sharpe

Tuesday, November 29

THE MINUTE AIMEE Wellington enters stage right in the new musical Sweatshock, all interest exits. Oh wait, no, hang on, not all interest! There's the can'tlook/must-look fascinated horror of watching a speeding train heading for a stalled busload of nuns and orphans.

Has this woman or anyone handling her ever heard of the following concepts: Voice lessons? Acting lessons? Clue lessons? Pinocchio was less wooden. Adelaide from Guys and Dolls less nasal. The Invisible Man had more stage presence.

Could they not find one actress in Boston who could carry a tune, read lines with something approaching natural delivery or look like she was part of the ensemble instead of a wiggly, sexual meme-me prop?

Oh, right, sorry, what was I thinking? It's not about talent. With Aimee Wellington it's never about talent. It's about money. It's about a chain of department stores that made her family fortune. It's about a father's decision to let her at that fortune way before she was mature enough to handle it. It's about getting famous by being infamous.

What happened to getting the best cast possible? Is the public that celebrity-crazed?

A sad state of affairs. From my seat, watching Aimee's two- expression acting and listening to her off-key whiny singing, I was very tempted to haul out a miniature dart gun and shoot her with a tranquilizer. Surely whomever they have understudying her would be less painful. Heck, put me on the stage!

And get real!

KRISTA MARLOW READ through her latest blog post again, crunching thoughtfully on natural-sea-salt potato chips she shouldn't be crunching on, thoughtfully or not, if she wanted to keep her weight at a healthy level. She'd started by bringing a sensible serving size out in a little red plastic bowl, one of the ones she and her sister used to have backyard picnic lunches in as kids, which she wouldn't let her mom throw away. But after three sensible serving sizes, she got tired of getting up and down — and even more tired of being sensible — so she brought the whole bag in and balanced it on the stack of papers and novels teetering on her desk.

Sometimes potato chips were necessary. This was one of those times.

Aimee Wellington drove Krista crazy. Not only because Krista's sister, Lucy, who could sing, act and dance circles around Aimee, had also been up for the part of Bridget in Sweatshock after Krista had practically dragged her to the audition. But just on principle. There were too many image-created idiots ruling showbiz — voices electronically enhanced and pitch-corrected, bodies surgically altered to some artificial ideal of perfection. And don't get her started on teenagers selling sex before they should be having it themselves.

Okay, so she sounded like someone's grandmother. And yes, she'd lost her virginity in her teens. But she wasn't out there pushing the experience on everyone else's kids. It hurt to see talent such as her sister's being wasted. To see her working a brainless office job, performing lounge gigs at night only a handful of white-hairs went to see, while no-talent prima-donna princesses rose to the top, like scum in a stockpot.

Krista's personal pilgrimage was to chip away at glossy facades, to point out in her blogs, Internet articles and pieces for the Boston Sentinel or any print media she could sell to, how people were being fooled by so much crap, into thinking crap was good. Her editor kept hinting that a staff reviewer was retiring soon, but Krista wanted to be like an octopus, tentacles spreading her message in all directions.

Call her crazy, call her a visionary, call her obsessed, but she wanted to leave her mark. Start some movement back to quality and a more natural rhythm to people's money-and- time-obsessed existences.

She'd started her own blogging Web site, Get Real, where she regularly skewered whatever artifice came to her attention. This new overpackaged, overprocessed gim-micky food product, that new undeserving star, this new over-the- top vacation destination which resembled a theme park more than a hotel. The Christmas holiday season had sparked a whole new crop of outrage over rampant commercialism, pressure to spend and compete, consumption-crazed children and ho ho ho, goodwill to all men, now get the hell out of my way before I ram you with my shopping cart.

Jeff Sites, a regular columnist at the Boston Sentinel, had mentioned her rants in one of his Local Life columns and her Web site hits had gone off the chart.

Happiness.

The more people who stopped and thought about what crap they were supporting with their hard-earned dollars, the more she hoped they'd vote with their wallets and demand quality. Or keep their wallets in their pockets, stay home and sing songs with their kids or play with the overload of stuff they already had. Leave the merchants and marketers scrambling for something else with real appeal.

Like good quality at affordable prices.

She posted the blog and peered, yawning, at the clock in the bottom right corner of her computer screen. Oops. Nearly midnight. She needed her beauty rest.

One glance around her one-bedroom walk-up and Krista sighed. And she needed cleaner surroundings.

She stood, stretching her shoulder and back muscles — always tight no matter how many relaxation techniques she tried — grabbed the bag of chips, folded the top and headed for her kitchen and the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. She always did them before bed. A new day required a clean, organized living space.

Okay, mostly organized. Primarily clean. Hygienic certainly.

Dishes done and a bottle of water grabbed from her squeaky refrigerator — which needed cleaning, sigh — she brushed her teeth and went into her bedroom, carpeted with the same icky brown-orange shag as the kitchen/living/dining room. Someday she'd own a fabulous place, maybe in Cambridge, maybe down by the harbor, with hardwood floors and woven wool rugs. When her popularity and message caught on. When she wrote her first book. When she got her first appearance on Oprah...

Oops. Live in the moment. She forgot.

She began her nightly routine by standing in mountain pose, tall and still in the fairly small space between her bed and the wall, and concentrated on clearing her mind, concentrated on the sensations in her body and the play of her muscles holding her up. Spine straight, chin parallel to the floor...

Next, she started the sun salute, breathe in, out, arms in prayer position; breathe in, reaching up, palms facing; breathe out, swan dive to a forward fold, bent at the waist, trying to get her face to touch her knees.

As if.

Breathe in, right leg back in a runner's lunge.... Maybe she should do an article for a women's magazine on the benefits of a daily yoga routine, couching it in humor, focusing on spiritual satisfaction as a way to reduce spending for things one didn't need, not being preachy, just —

Mind clear, Krista.

Breathe in, breathe out. Her body followed the positions automatically. Breathe in, breathe out....

Tomorrow she would research the article she was proposing to Budget Travel magazine, about off-the-beaten-track, affordable holiday getaways. Romantic escapes from the pressures of the season. She could jot down a few ideas for the yoga article, too. And she needed to get going on one for Food & Wine about the country's love affair with oversalting and artificial flavor. She was thinking about calling it "Chemical Attraction."

Mind clear, Krista. Damn. She could never quite manage it.

Her phone rang and she gave up attempting inner peace and grabbed it. Only Lucy would call at this hour, home from her Tuesday night gig singing at Eddie's.

"Hey, Krista."

Krista frowned. Her younger sister didn't exactly sound jubilant. But then, she'd been sort of a pale imitation of herself for a while. "Bad show tonight?"

"Not terrific. Usually it's such a nice crowd. Tonight this drunk guy kept propositioning me during When I Fall In Love, and a few too many people acted as if I was a videotape in their living rooms and they were free to shout to each other whenever the mood hit." She sounded close to tears.

Bingo. An article or blog about technology-saturated people's newfound unfamiliarity with live entertainment and audience etiquette. Krista kept the phone to her ear and dragged off her sweats, letting the silence lag so her sister would fill it. Something else was really bothering Lucy. She knew the pitfalls of her business and had dealt with crowds much rougher than this one sounded.

"Then I got home and Link and I...we're barely speaking."

Krista cringed. Lincoln Baxter had been Lucy's unofficial fiancé for four years. Krista was sorry, and maybe she was being overly judgmental, but if you really wanted to marry someone, why didn't you do it? They'd been together six years, since their senior year at Tufts, and in Krista's opinion, the shine was off and they'd do better finding someone new. Link hadn't even managed to come up with a ring yet. "He spends every evening watching TV. I just wish he'd spend some of that time with me. He never comes to hear me sing anymore, not that I blame him, but it would be nice, and I've asked him to. He stays up until all hours, we almost never go to bed at the same time, and when we do...well, nothing happens."

Krista winced and tossed her sweats on the chair next to her bed. She was getting the message. No sex, no intimacy. Might as well buy a male blow-up doll.

Hmm, maybe an article about artificial behaviors in men during courtship. Or make that artificial behaviors in women, too, so she wouldn't go on record as a man hater. Since she was, in fact, definitely not one, though with the mostly off-again unsatisfying state of her love life she was starting to consider it.

"Lucy, I think it's time to take a look at this relationship."

"No, no." The fear in Lucy's voice made Krista's heart sink. "It's not that bad."

"You can't stay with him because you're afraid of being alone."

"He's the man for me, Krista. I've known since the second I set eyes on him."

Right. Krista fumbled for her pink flannel nightgown under her bed pillows. She believed in that love-at-first-sight stuff exactly not at all. Chemistry she believed in, instant attraction she believed in, but love took time. Love was what was left when infatuation finally got bored and took a hike. Love was what she saw in her parents' eyes every time they looked at each other.

Okay, not every time. When Dad put off cleaning the garage too long or mom took three days to make a simple decision... "Neither of you is the same person as in college." She lifted her arms one at a time to slip the nightgown over her head, whipping the phone around the neckline and back to her ear. "People change. You grew apart."

"We're just in a rut right now. We need something. I don't know what."

"Counseling?"

"He won't go."

"Lucy, you really —"

"I gotta go, he's coming to bed. Lunch Thursday?"

"Sure." Krista hung up the phone and scrunched her face in a scowl. Her sister was incredibly sweet and incredibly talented and deserved to be riding the wave of love and stardom all the way to happy ever after. Instead she'd been upstaged by a bimbo and had shackled herself to a man indifferent to what made her so special. Loyalty, talent, intelligence, empathy, sex appeal, beauty, sparkle — well, she used to sparkle. Now she just glowed dully through mucky layers of disappointment.

Krista put in her earplugs and slid into bed. If Lucy had gotten the part in Sweatshock, she'd be in a position of power, and Krista would bet a million she'd have the strength to leave Link and find someone who deserved her. A new love that fit the dynamic, fabulous person she was now.

Just another grudge to hold against the inimitable — thank God — Aimee Wellington.