You Can't Have it All {Open}

[JENNA GRAY]

Jenna Gray roved the party expertly, making the correct greetings and engaging in brief political conversations concerning corporate diplomacy, transactions with amounts of money larger than most New Yorkers could ever fathom, the closing and silent switching between hands of companies that governed the world’s economy. Between the groups she flitted, well, the groups containing important acquaintances of hers, never spending too much time with one single conglomerate. After all, in the high corporate world, contacts and acquaintances, in both quantity and quality, could often mean the difference between resounding success and crushing, debt-inducing failure.

She felt hideous in this dress, this pillar of perfection and frivolity into which she’d stuffed herself. ”Call me Jay,” she longed to say, more than she felt like she’d ever longed for anything in the world, every time she introduced herself as “Hi, Jenna Gray. Jenna Gray, pleasure. Yes, the Jenna Gray indeed. Ms. Gray will do, thank you. Yes, I am Jenna Gray. Jenna Gray, hello.” Ze hated dresses, especially these skimpy shifts of fabric wrapped around her body so as to fully showcase the attributes that she despised the most about her body. These sorts of gatherings should have been Jenna Gray’s home, and yet they were like a foreign country to her, a foreign country that she visited every day and was a well-known citizen of, but could never seem to feel comfortable in.

But where was her home country? Because it certainly wasn’t Lanagan. She’d be caught dead in the Hudson River before ever returning to that town.

After about an hour of such small talk she awarded herself with a much deserved break, withdrawing into a corner to scroll through a slew of recent emails on her Blackberry and glance around at the way Jim had chosen to decorate the place. The chandelier was certainly much too close to the staircase leading to the balcony for either to offer much aesthetic value, and his choice of curtains went with the wallpaper about as well as polka dots with stripes. Jenna wondered what atrocious interior designers this man had hired, and hoped to God that someone had gotten them fired.

Wondering if he’d managed to hire adequate bartenders, though quite suspecting that he hadn’t, she made her way over to the bar. She didn’t recognize anything on the menu off the top of her head—her publicist almost always selected the wines for Jenna’s benefits and such—so she made her way over to the first customer-looking guest she could find. ”Excuse me,”she remarked to the woman, adopting the polite, professional, and powerful public relations voice that Jay so despised. ”What is it you’ve got there? And would you recommend it?”


Tagz: Open so I’m told!
Clothez: Click
Notez: and I was like baby baby baby oooooh
Creditz: Lyrics are The End by My Chemical Romance. Template is by MONICA of OUAC. Don’t be stealin’, ya hear?

[JENNA GRAY]

Jenna continued to eye the room around her passively, watching the masked dancers as they swirled in and out of each other like cupcake frosting. The light glittered off of various sequins and rhinestones on the sea of masks surrounding her, creating hundreds of miniature disco balls parading across the ceiling. A masquerade ball. Really, of all ideas for a charity fundraiser? A wine tasting could have garnered at least twice the profit, she was sure. Not to mention that…well, there appeared to be children at this benefit. How in God’s name had Jim managed to run that one by management?

Jenna pulled out her Blackberry to check the time. Another hour and a half before her Afterparty was scheduled to begin (and there would be neither masks nor children involved in that affair, certainly), meaning that she’d need to start drinking Marcus Borgia’s potion in about an hour’s time. She glanced at the wine glass in the adjacent woman’s hand, wondering if it would be wise.

“It’s a vodka tonic. And I would only recommend it if you could handle liquor. If you’re looking for wine, well, I’ve tried what is offered here, and I’ve got much better stuff at home.”

”The wine selections do strike me as rather proletarian,” she remarked, preoccupied with a sudden realization. It was the woman’s voice that did it, the decidedly Irish accent that coated her words. That voice…combined with that face…where had Jenna seen that face before? A magazine, perhaps? Or a billboard of some sort?

”Oh really? And what is it you have at home that you’d recommend? I’m still constructing the selection for my Afterparty.” Or perhaps it had been in person, at an event of some sort. But then, that couldn’t have been here, in New York, and if it had been in London or Paris in the past year, she’d certainly remember it more clearly. ”I suppose I’ll order the cabernet. You’re right, vodka’s never been quite to my taste.” It wasn’t even this face for certain, simply…the ghost of it. A hint. She’d definitely seen some semblance of it before. A family relation, perhaps? An overseas family with whom she’d…

But no. It couldn’t be…

”I’m sorry, forgive me, are you…” Perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps Jenna was delusional, or perhaps she was mixing contacts, swapping politically important names for politically important faces. But there was just something about that voice, those eyes, that…way of standing and presenting herself, that shot Jenna two years into the past, to a gathering not unlike this one, flitting between the facets and ladling out her words based on the mentally calculated ‘importance rating’ she’d placed upon each group there, eyes constantly on the prize, constantly on the single family she’d always known was the oldest and brightest star on the top of any Christmas Tree… ”Are you by any chance…an O’Callaghan? A…a Dublin O’Callaghan?”


Tagz: Open so I’m told!
Clothez: Click
Notez: So I TOTALLY just made some shit up. If any of it is inaccurate just let me know and I will be on that like Donkey Kong.
Creditz: Lyrics are The End by My Chemical Romance. Template is by MONICA of OUAC. Don’t be stealin’, ya hear?