Chapter 13

“And to present the award for ‘Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama’, Two-time Academy Award winner and three-time Golden Globe winner Corinne DeLoie, along with her husband Mattson Childers, and their son Bradford Childers!”

The crowd applauded and cheered, especially the upper balconies, where people not part of the entertainment industry found their seats. Corinne walked out holding Mattson’s hand while he carried their son.

She was dressed in a royal blue gown of elegance and style, carefully fitted to her smaller frame and edged with pearls and lace along the seam lines and across the shoulders, chest, and waist. He was dressed in a tuxedo of the same color, with a white tie and cummerbund. Bradford was dressed in a mirror of his father’s tuxedo, with a bow tie the same as the one at his father’s neck.

The applause for the young actress and mother continued on, and for a minute, she attempted to quiet the crowd, but to no avail.

Corinne looked out at the audience and tried to see who was applauding and who wasn’t, but it was difficult to see anyone in the latter category. While people were not on their feet, everyone was still cheering and clapping for her. So Mattson stepped back, and with a gentle, noble gesture, swept his hand and arm towards his bride, causing the noise level to go even higher.

“Thank you for that amazing welcome! It’s nice to see that you appreciate my husband and son in their matching attire!” Corinne made the self-deprecating statement in hopes that it would calm the audience a bit, but people seemed to be content to stop the show for a moment to pay homage to her, for whatever reason. She would ask her people later to figure out what was happening, except that she let them all go when she decided to make ‘A Love Timeless’, since she didn’t want them to be tainted by association with someone who made ‘such filth’ as the religious idiots were calling that project now. Oh well; there were services for that sort of thing, she supposed.

Eventually the crowd quieted down, and she and Mattson got down to the reason for their presence.

“We are here to present the award...” Corinne was interrupted by someone coming up the stairs stage right, and walking over to them. She turned to look, and almost gasped at the sight of Lacy White, dressed in a shimmering red and opal dress that looked truly stunning. The audience applauded once again, recognizing the new actress to the stage. Lacy smiled and nodded to them in gracious thanks, before stopping right at the microphone.

“Imma let you finish in a moment,” she started to say, but the audience, especially the upper balcony people, caught the reference to Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s award speech from a few years back at the Grammy’s, laughing and applauding. The cameras cut away to where Kanye and Kim were sitting a few rows back just in time to see him hunker down in his seat and scowl. Kim glared up at the actress, but didn’t say anything else.

“Seriously, though, I wanted to take a moment to thank Ms. DeLoie for righting a wrong. She outed Conrad Brauer, who beat me up to get me to do a sex scene for his movie and nearly drove me out of the business. He tried to do the same to my new BFF Corinne here, but she gave him the business right back, thank goodness. I also wanted to ask everyone here in front of us today for a favor. Could anyone who was ever assaulted by Conrad Brauer please stand up for a moment? The producers told me that we have a few minutes to do this, so please, be brave, be bold, and stand up to violence in our industry.”

No one moved at first, but Lacy spoke again. “Please, I know that there are more of you out there. You know he did this to me and tried to do it to Corinne. Brauer made a lot of movies over the years, and he got a lot of fine actresses to do scenes that many swore would never happen. And we know now that he didn’t ask nicely. Please, for everyone that will ever come into this line of work after us, please stand up and show that we won’t tolerate this anymore.”