to make things awkward | fillie

1 | mysterious calls

Summer 2034

This day, Millie thought dreadfully, when will this day be over? It had started at four a.m. in a hotel room being donned with make-up to last through a nuclear holocaust, and only went downhill from there. It wasn't as if she was averse to four a.m. wake-ups, they were actually quite routine now, but on this particular rainy July day, after eleven separate interviews in seven hours, it was getting to her.

At least she was in a car now. Relatively quiet, with more privacy than she'd had access to since she showered this morning, it was like a breath of fresh air. She breathed out a long sigh, fogging the window she gazed out of, watching the thick raindrops fall into mucky trivets of running water flowing along the streets of New York. She wanted to be back home where she could be staring out from a highrise window, hundreds of feet above the streets of Atlanta where it was currently a sunny eighty-five degrees. At least she had her trusty companion with her, Winnie. The old dog—more like old puppy—sighed and snuggled her head deeper into Millie's lap.

"Millie." an increasingly annoyed voice said, "Millie, did you hear me?"

She turned her head to see her assistant, Samantha, looking up at her from her tablet.

"Yes, Sam." she replied, "I always hear you."

Samantha smirked, "Well you have a funny way of showing it sometimes."

"Two more, then off to JFK for my flight home at six, right?" Millie asked, proving herself with a sarcastic smile.

"Correct." Sam nodded, snapping the cover of her tablet closed over its screen, "And then tomorrow, all you have is the premiere."

It would have sounded sarcastic except it was only a virtual premiere. Something perfected in the age of the pandemic, now only used for films with less than favorable early audience reviews, which Millie's latest film fell under. As several of her latest films had fallen under. It seemed the days of the blockbuster, award-winning, massive audience approval movies, were gone. Fallen way to the big-budget-bigger-failure films like this one. Crosley's Corner. A musically inclined period drama that had the ingredients of a great film, yet somehow fell far short of success. Like most of her work as of late. No matter how great the star power, how fabulous the directors, how talented the crew, it was like a dark cloud hung over Millie's head, turning anything she touched into a sloppy mess, much like the streets she had returned her attention to outside her window.

"Another day, another dollar." she whispered bitterly into the window, but then her cell phone began to buzz in her purse. Winnie's ears perked up, but she kept her head in its rest position. She took it out to find that the call was coming from a blocked number. She groaned, stuffing it back into its pocket. Winnie, too, set her ears back to relax.

"Again?" Sam asked.

Millie nodded with pursed lips.

"God. People. . . Are you able to block blocked numbers?" Sam mused.

"Not this one." she turned toward Sam once more, "I already blocked it twice, but I've been starting to wonder if maybe it's multiple numbers." she sighed, "That's the problem with blocked numbers, there's no way to know if it's the same number calling over and over, or if they keep changing it up." she glared at the phone through the purse, " Might just change my number again if this keeps up."

Sam put her hands together in a prayer-like gesture and looked up, saying, "Oh please, Lord, stop the calls."

This made Millie laugh for the first time today. She remembered the absolute hell that Sam went through the last time she had to change her number. No one knew how to contact Millie directly, so everything went through her for at least two weeks and of course it was during a time that everyone and their grandmother was trying to get ahold of her. Sam's phone had rang off the hook all day everyday. By the end of it, Sam's poofy, always fashionable afro had collapsed and congealed until she looked frighteningly similar to Cynthia, Angelica's doll from the Rugrats. Millie had to give the poor girl a spa-getaway to get over it.