ROMANIAN HOLIDAY

The city of Bucharest, Romania, had not always been bleak. At one time, during the late 19th century, its streets were lined with opulent, Art Nouveau apartment buildings, punctuated by remnants of its past going back to the Crusades. Byzantine chapels, medieval castles, neoclassical arches glistened on the city's wide boulevards like diamond earrings on a Kenyan princess. But by this day, this damp, dull April day in 1968, much of its jewelry had been stripped away by the regime in Moscow, bulldozed to make way for mile after mile of square, dull, utilitarian Soviet apartment blocs. The city had the look of an old Kodachrome photo, left out in the sun too long until all the color had been drained away, leaving nothing behind but greys and browns and anemic reds. 
One of the few remaining gems from the not-so-Communist past was the Hotel Paris, a sensuous, sinewy six-story hotel built in 1898 by a young architect, a protégé of the great Antonio Gaudí himself. 
Ironically, the Hotel Paris owed much of its preservation to the Party itself, who decided that rather than being stripped of its fine furnishings and decadent western amenities, the hotel would be preserved as a showplace for distinguished visitors from Moscow and from abroad. Such surroundings would be powerful evidence of the prosperity of Romania's people, either thanks to the Glorious Party, or in spite of it, depending on the intended audience.
On this day, only one room at the Hotel Paris was occupied: the Presidential Suite, which the People's Committee for Pointless Semantics had incongruously renamed the "Suită pentru Muncitori", which loosely translated means "Suite for Laborers". There we find Stella, seated on the bench of a pristine white 1896 Steinway & Sons baby grand piano. She is wearing a made-to-order olive tweed Evan Picone suit and a smart pillbox, looking slightly rumpled after a fifteen hour flight from New York on some inept East German airline.  She is frantically trying, in vain, to get a live phone line, rattling the receiver and squawking, "Hello? Hello? What's the goddam Romanian word for hello?" She gives up eventually, extracting a Belair 100 from her sequined cigarette case, lighting it, and taking the sort of long, deep drag which alone could no doubt erase a week from her overall lifespan.
"Shit." 
She exhaled. The smoke lingered near the ceiling, swirling in tendrils around the crystals of the chandelier.
"It was an honest mistake, 'Stelle," said a voice from the bathroom. Lila had been in there for the last twenty minutes. It was the same in every hotel they checked into. "QMT!" she would claim, which meant 'Quality Mirror Time', and in she would go to acquaint herself with every silvery square inch of her new best friend. "Anyone could have done it."
The fact was, Stella hadn't even realized her own mistake until they had already gotten off the plane in Bucharest. No limousine, no adoring fans, no paparazzi, very unusual for a ScreamGirls world appearance. She fished the crumpled telegram from the bottom of her voluminous Italian handbag. Shit! It wasn't Bucharest, it was Budapest. And it wasn't Budapest, it was Paris.
"Hotel Paris in Bucharest, Hotel Budapest in Paris, yeah, it's almost the same thing. Close but no cigar!" said Stella.
"Have no fear, darlings, vodka is here!" came the voice of Svetlana, kicking the door open with one exquisite pump, holding a frozen bottle of fine Russian vodka in one hand and three glasses in the other. Her long, platinum blond tresses billowed effortlessly behind her, as did the blood red folds of her lustrous silk Dior travelling ensemble.
"Finally, Queen! What took you so long?" said, Lila, emerging at last from the bathroom, enticed by the thought of a syrupy, frozen Stolichnaya. Behind her, on the bathroom vanity, she left an astounding debris field of eyebrow pencils, lipsticks, powders, potions, lotions, and strange implements. She looked absolutely no different than she had when she had gone in. The ringlets of hair falling around her face were just as red, her skin just as porcelain, and the lipstick on her full, heavy lips was just as whorish. "Well, at least the show's not scheduled until tomorrow night."
"There's not going to be a show if I can't get a line out and book a flight to Paris!" said Stella, checking to be sure that the phone was plugged in to the wall. 
Svetlana poured three glasses of the viscous, frozen vodka. Handing one to Stella, she and Lila both made themselves comfortable on one of the 1840 Empire-style sofas which dotted the enormous suite. Lila admired the amazing, mirror-like finish of the exquisite 18th-century Catherine the Great mahogany table in front of her. "Perfect!" she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a gram of nearly-pink Peruvian cocaine, a one hundred dollar bill, and a gold American Express card embossed with the name Stefano DiPullyanack III.
Sensing the stares of the other girls, she looked up, innocently. "What?" she said. "Does this Empire sofa make my butt look big?"
Just then, Stella's eyes lit up. "Hello? Hello?" The line had finally come alive. 
"Hello, yes, American Embassy please. A-mer-i-can.... No, I don't speak Romanian. A-mer-i-can-Em-bass-see! Please!"
Stella, like all Americans, believed that people who don't speak English will somehow understand if it is spoken very slowly and very loudly.
"I said A!-Mer!-I!-Can! Yes! U! S! A! Bay of fucking Pigs Godammit!"
She stopped screaming and covered the mouthpiece for a moment. "Well," she said to the other girls, "that seems to have worked!"
Svetlana was not so much sitting on the sumptuous mauve upholstery as she was displayed upon it. At the moment, she was straightening the seam in her stocking which ran up the back of her leg. Lila was spelling out dirty words in cocaine.
After a slight pause, Stella chirped into the telephone. "Helloo-oo! Monty! Montgomery Reynolds! Of course you are, darling, of course you are! It's 'Stelle, darling. Stella? Stella Estelle-Steenburg-Steinberg-Steinsteen-Bloom? That's right! Remember that weekend in Milwaukee- what was that, '63? '64?" She laughed the laugh of a pregnant debutante at the Spring Cotillion. "That's right, Monty, darling, that weekend in Milwaukee!"
A slight pause.
"Don't be ridiculous, darling. Of course I still have the pictures! Now, listen, darling, I do need just the littlest favor..."
"How the fuck does she do it?" Lila asked Svetlana, snorting up the entire word "boobs" in one go. "Has she slept with the entire diplomatic corps?"
"Only the ones you haven't slept with, darling," said Svetlana. She took the rolled up hundred-dollar bill, looking down at the beautifully inlaid tabletop, where Lila had written "tittys' in white powder. She snorted up the letter "i", daintily dabbing the dot with her forefinger and rubbing it on her gums.
Lila eyed her suspiciously. "Where did you find that bottle of Stoli, Svetlana?" she asked.
"Svetlana knows people, darling! All over the world!"
This was true. She had spent fully half her life on this side of the Iron Curtain, that is to say, the wrong side. Over the years, the girls had learned her life story in dribs and drabs, during long taxi rides home when Svetlana had had one or twelve too many scotches. Something about being born to poor dirt farmers in the Russian steppes, where as a young girl she had to push a plow to help feed the family. From those humble beginnings, there were other hints about careers as an international fashion model,a medalist for the Hungarian Women's Synchronized Swim team, and/or a hired assassin for the East German Secret Police, the Stasi. Nothing about Svetlana surprised them at this point.
"Well, pour me another shot, will ya?" said Lila. "And make sure to thank whoever he was, Missy. Frozen and everything... It's almost as if they knew you were coming."
" 'Poop' has two "o"s, darling," said Svetlana, glancing at the table.
Stella was wrapping things up on the telephone. "Marvelous! Thank you so much, Monty darling. And do give my warmest regards to your lovely wife, won't you? Margaret, isn't it? Yes, well..."
A brief pause.
"No, no, you've done quite enough already!  Lovely chatting with you! Ta-Ta!" She hung up the phone, her voice oozing sincerity like a mall Santa on Black Friday. "Pompous asshole," she muttered.
Stella turned to the other girls. "OK, we're all set for tomorrow. Non-stop for Paris, departs from Vlad the Impaler International at 8:30am."
"Eight-thirty?" moaned Svetlana, downing another glass of Stolichnaya. 
"We can stay here, in Babushkaville, Svetlana, and put on a show for the huddled masses, the non-paying huddled masses," Stella admonished, "or we can get up early and go to Paris. Paris, France! Jean-Claude is in Paris!"
Svetlana's face brightened. "8:30 it is, then! Remind me to get dressed before I go to bed, will you? That way all I have to do is put lipstick on."
"What about tonight, ladies?" said Lila. "What are we going to do for fun in this berg?"
"Well, Monty did mention a nightclub..." said Stella. 
"What are we wearing?" shrieked Lila, running back into the bathroom.

Several hours later, the sun had set over Bucharest. With the darkness, a kind of Iron Curtain gloom settled over the city, an odd blend of paranoia, boredom, and resignation that seemed to suck all the mystery and promise out of the night until it was just, well, dark. The lobby of the Hotel Paris was empty, save for one desk clerk, one bellman, and one elaborately uniformed bartender, swaying unsteadily behind the bar, waiting for customers who would never come. 
The elevator doors slid open slowly. The Hotel Paris being what it was, the elevator was a bit, well, slow, to say the least, and the trip down from the sixth floor had taken fully eight minutes. The bellman and the desk clerk turned to see Lila fanning herself furiously with a powdery one hundred dollar bill. "Jesus Christ!" she was saying, "Don't they have air conditioning in Russia?"
"Romania, darling, we are in Romania," said Svetlana. She was holding the dregs of the once-frozen Stoli bottle to the nape of her neck.
"Ladies! Please!" said Stella, heading off any further hysterics. "We have arrived!"
The three queens gathered themselves and stepped out of the elevator as if they had just arrived at Buckingham Palace. From sheer habit, or perhaps training, they stopped to strike an impromptu but nonetheless fabulous pose just after exiting the elevator, stopping just long enough for any flashbulbs to go off. None did. The desk clerk was speaking quietly into his telephone and the bellman was trying to hide an erection. The bartender still swayed unsteadily, dreaming of retirement and a cottage by a lake.
"God, this place is worse than Atlantic City," said Stella as they crossed the lobby. Svetlana had apparently noticed the bellman's predicament and was whispering something to him in Russian while she squeezed his crotch with one hand. 
"Come on, Missy," said Lila, leading Svetlana away by the wrist. Without turning around, she raised her other hand in a wave as they walked out of the lobby. "Goodnight, boys!" she said. "Don't wait up!"
The ladies stepped out into the somber Bucharest night. "Taxi!" shrieked Lila as they looked up the street, and down the street in unison. Nothing. The only car on the street was a broken down Trabant with three tires and no windscreen.
"How far is this place?" said Svetlana.
"Not far, ladies," said Stella, heading off confidently towards the city's east side.
"Alright, then," said Lila, fishing through her smart evening bag for a Xanax.
"Off we go," said Svetlana, draining the last of the Stoli and throwing the empty bottle high over their heads. It fell back down to the street with a thunderous crash and shattered into a million pieces. Not a soul was around to notice.
For a while, the only sound to be heard was the telltale sound of three queens, doggedly making their way through the cobblestone streets of the old city. Click - click - scrape! Click - click - click - scrape!
After a few minutes, the girls began to notice a change in the light of the street around them. Soon they realized that it was the headlights of a car, and as it grew closer they began to hear the rather rheumatic sound of an Eastern Bloc engine bearing down on them. 
Something in them knew. Some sixth sense, some intuition told them this could mean nothing but trouble. But, a spotlight is a spotlight, so as the headlights grew brighter, the girls threw their handbags to the ground and did what they did best. They struck a pose.
The car stopped in front of them. Both the doors on the car's left side opened, and two men in identical, ill-fitting Romanian suits stepped out. One was holding a gun. The other was applauding.
"Very nice, ladies, very nice," the man said. His thick mustachioed Russian accent spoke of beets, Bolsheviks, and Beluga. "I would ask for an autograph, but I find myself without a pen."
"I've got a pen!" said Lila, making a move for her purse, which was still on the ground.
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you, Miss Jewels," the man said. They heard the sound of the other man, cocking his gun.
"How do you know my name?" said Lila.
"Oh, we know all about you, Miss Jewels. All three of you, in fact," said the man. "But all we are really interested in, 'ladies'," he said, looking directly at Svetlana, "is the jewels."
"Jewels?" said Stella.
"I know we're in Russia, honey-" Lila's speech was beginning to slur just a little bit.
"-Romania!" Svetlana interjected.
"-Romania," said Lila, "but honestly, darling, all this could be yours for $3.98 at Woolworth's!" She was trying to remove her necklace over her head without messing her coif.
"Not those jewels, Miss Jewels!" snarled the man. "I think Miss Falana knows what we are looking for."
Stella and Lila turned. "Svetlana?" said Stella. "What are they after?"
Svetlana shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Oh, alright," she said, bending over to pick up her handbag. "It's the diamonds they want."
Stella regarded her sideways. "What diamonds?"
"Well, these diamonds," answered Svetlana, taking a small velvet pouch from her purse. 
"Oh, those diamonds!" said Stella.
"Where the hell did those come from?" asked Lila, looking a bit wobbly. She seemed to have forgotten that there was a gun pointed at her and had already picked her purse up off the ground. "Who's got a cigarette? I've got a lighter in here goddam somewhere..."
"Well, I figured since we were here in Bucharest..." started Svetlana. "My friend, Pavel, he always needed a little, well, assistance, you see. Moving things around."
"Smuggling, Svetlana? Really?" said Stella. "At what point were you going to let us in on your little scheme?" She had also retrieved her handbag and was handing a Belair to Lila. 
"Menthol? No thanks," said Lila.
The man with the gun was beginning to look a little confused. He glanced apprehensively towards the other man.
"Well, sometimes, you know, the less you know about something, the better off you are," offered Svetlana. "Besides, I was going to tell you all about it, afterwards, when we were spending all of the lovely money I was supposed to be making."
"Here, Miss Jewels, a real cigarette," said the man with the mustache. 
Lila took the cigarette without looking, still rooting around in her purse for a lighter. "Aha!" she said, "Here it is!"
She put the cigarette between her lips. She then pulled from her purse a Luger model 1908 pistol, and within half a second had shot both men right between their eyes. 
"Ladies," she said, returning the pistol to her purse. Stella lit the cigarette which still dangled from her lower lip. "I got us a ride to the club."
"I'm driving," said Svetlana, discreetly dropping the velvet pouch back into her evening bag.
They stepped over the bodies of the two men and drove off into the inky gloom of Bucharest.

Twenty four hours later, and the lights of Paris' famed Moulin Rouge were going up, as was the curtain. The crowd, decked out in their finest Parisian fashions, was frenzied with anticipation. The orchestra began to play and a thousand hearts skipped a beat when at last the spotlights came on, and there they were: The ScreamGirls themselves, legends of stage, screen and gin joint. Their hair- so big! Their eye shadow- so blue! Their heels- so high! And those dresses - oh, the dresses! So very, very sparkly!