Men of worth pursue big goals.
~The Max Hilton Playbook: Ten Golden Rules for Landing the Hottest Girl in the Room
* * *
Mia
My blinged-out outfit isn’t feeling all that fun in the grim morning light of our cold kitchen. In fact, rather than improving the look, the sparkly stuff seems to be saying, in case you haven’t noticed, check it out! I’m wearing a dorky delivery outfit!
I pull on my winter coat and hat and trudge to the subway station. The closer I get, the more my heart sinks. I’ll have to do my entire route in it, including a likely delivery to Max Hilton.
But I remind myself that I’m not doing it just for me. I’m doing it for justice. For Kelsey and Jada and all the other women who got worked.
I reach the Meow Squad truck. I don’t see our driver, but my work frenemy, Sienna, is there.
I stroll with confidence that I don’t feel.
Sienna has pretty strawberry blonde hair and a dusting of freckles on her perfect nose, basically, the kind of looks that allow her to look either beautifully scrappy or beautifully elegant, depending on the needs of whatever part she’s competing with me for, and she has amazing fashion sense and cool friends who seem slightly futuristic.
She feels confident about her superiority to all of us, and she’s 98 percent right. I like to pretend I don’t care about her opinion, but I actually do.
Sienna also has an amazing talent for posing. It helps that she has a really long, willowy body and long limbs, so when she leans against a wall, it’s willowy girl leaning cool, whereas when I do it with my considerably shorter and less willowy limbs, it just looks like pasta-fed girl of sturdy Italian stock is sooo weary. Pasta-fed girl needs to work on cardio. Pasta-fed girl shouldn’t have gotten bangs, but she’s doing the best she can so give her a break already.
Sienna is eyeing my boots. “What’s up with the boots?”
“Nothing. Just…” I decide it’s now or never. I pull off my hat and take off my coat and shove the stuff in the back of the truck. And then turn and try to look natural.
Sienna is staring at my uniform with a stunned look and let’s just say you wouldn’t call it stunned admiration.
She devotes extra staring time to my sequined ears, her pretty features twisted into horrified yet delighted confusion. “You lose a bet or something?”
I’m about to explain the whole thing, but then I decide not to. An actress commits to a part. “No, I’ve decided that I’m the queen of delivery cats.”
Sienna adds a lip twist. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“Do I look like I’m trying to be funny? Do you see the work that went into this? I’m the queen of the delivery cats.”
“What? You just…decided that?”
“That’s right.”
She gapes at me a bit longer.
I smile and pull out my phone.
“Oh-kaaaaaay.” She pulls out her phone with an attitude of, done with the crazy person.
I scroll through Instagram miserably. I just have to get through this one day.
It’s possible somebody else at Maximillion Plaza specifically requested me as the delivery girl assigned to that tower. I don’t know anybody else there, but maybe somebody who saw me in a show or something?
“Isn’t that kind of like declaring yourself the queen of the latrine?” Sienna’s staring at me again. “Or like declaring yourself to be the most Burger Bob’s-iest of the Burger Bob’s fry crew?” Burger Bob’s is a greasy burger place we make fun of.
“It’s not like that at all,” I say, pocketing my phone. “I am queen of the delivery cats. It’s a desirable thing.”
She frowns. “So you think you’re the manager now?”
“No. It’s like, the queen of England doesn’t actually run the country. I’m queen of the delivery cats like that. I’m queen in spirit, in enthusiasm, in adornment. I’m alpha cat, and these shiny things signify that.”
“Well, they’re signifying something,” she grumbles.
“They signify my superiority,” I say, really, really committing.
She furrows her pretty brows. She is liking this less and less. Maybe these things won’t work as part of a diabolical plan to bring Max Hilton to his knees, but they certainly work as a Sienna Carlisle annoyance device. “That’s not the word I was thinking.”
I’m all smiles and utter conviction in my role. If there’s one thing you learn as an actress, it’s that the show must go on, but I so wish I could rip off the sequins and rhinestones and glam eyelashes. “I’m the top cat now. I’m the queen of the cats.”
There’s this little pep talk in the alpha-signaling section of Max’s book where he talks about how difficult it is to stand out from the herd. “When you alpha-signal, it’s not just about looking amazing, it’s also about communicating that you have enough personal power to pull off a bold look. The more you own your look, the more power you communicate,” he writes.
Thinking about that passage comforts me, which is ironic on about five different levels.
“What if I want to be queen?” Sienna asks.
“Too bad,” I say. “There can only be one queen.”
She laughs, like it’s all a big joke. “I can’t believe you’re going to deliver in that.”
“Watch and weep,” I say, though actually, I’m the one liable to weep, considering I’ll be delivering a sandwich to my legendary rival dressed as the most ridiculous cat of all the cats.
What have I done?
Our sector driver, Rollins, comes around to the back of the truck. He gives me a startled look, then starts pulling out carts.