Application: Lucille Bluth, "Arrested Development"

[thequeenbluth]

((Note for those of you who have not seen Arrested Development: The show has a narrator, who is voiced by Ron Howard and who acts like sort of a Greek Chorus, commenting on the action. He's very integral to the style of the show, so I've chosen to include him here. That said, this is totally a stylistic thing -- like how some characters are written

Comments

[charlesmacaulay]

Oh, God. This woman was horrible. Charles had definitely picked the wrong day to go looking for Camilla in the Sorting Room. (She was there so often, and Henry there so seldom, that it was a much better bet than dropping by Gryffindor.)

Charles offered a smile that showed nothing of his discomfort. "Port wine cheese is sort of pretty, isn't it?" he said politely.

[thequeenbluth]

Lucille seemed a little taken aback by the question, but she rallied herself and plastered on a smile. "Oh, uh, yes. What a lovely color. It matches my lovely carpet and my lovely drapes. It's really so very lovely."

This was a bald-faced lie: Lucille's only reason for picking port wine cheese was the name, and by extension one of the ingredients. Guess which one.

"Are you a member here?" Lucille asked. "I can't believe what they've done with the place."

[charlesmacaulay]

"I'm glad to hear the carpet and the drapes match," said Charles, utterly straight-faced and innocent. "What have they done with the place? This one, not yours. I'm afraid I haven't been here more than a few months."

[thequeenbluth]

"So you're new, then?" Lucille nodded. "Of course, I was wondering why I hadn't seen you before. I used to know everyone!" She looked around wistfully. "How times change. I can't say I'm a fan of the new decor around here. And I don't know how they manage to keep it clean, what with the staff of--"

Realizing that badmouthing the people she took to be staff publicly might get her into trouble with the club, Lucille took a different approach.

"--lovely people that must work their fingers to the bone." She smiled thinly. "Anyway. I'm Lucille Bluth," she said, in a tone that made it clear she assumed Charles would recognize the name.

[charlesmacaulay]

Not certain whether she meant she'd been brought up a witch, or whether she was merely deluded, Charles nodded politely. He'd never heard the name Bluth, nor would he have been familiar with it regardless of circumstance; Charles was not exactly conversant with the real-estate-development world. Had she been, say, a Roanoke society matron, he might have known the family.

"I'm Charles Macaulay," he said, not expecting her to recognize the name at all. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Bluth. I think they do their best around here," he added, trying to be diplomatic, though only the other day he'd told Blair Waldorf that Hogwarts was a 'godforsaken hellhole'.

[thequeenbluth]

The majority of Orange County was familiar with the Bluth name, if only because of their tendency to show up in the tabloids and gossip columns. Nationally speaking, they most frequently showed up in places such as the TV show Scandalmakers, Mad Money, and the magazines Balboa Bay Window and Poof (which Lucille's oldest son, G.O.B., had tried for years to get into). The result was that at this point, Lucille had accepted a certain level of infamy, and honestly expected everyone who was anyone, especially in Orange County, to recognize her.

"Well, I'm not sure what's so great about everything being old and dry and musty, but I suppose so," Lucille commented dryly.

She was talking about the castle. Really.

"I mean, it's not hard to dress things up a little. Right now, it seems so... so cold and uninviting."

That, too, was about the castle.

"You really want something that shouts 'come in and have fun!,' don't you think?"

And that too.

She smiled and sipped her drink. "But I guess they're going for a new look."

[charlesmacaulay]

"Old and musty I'll grant, but you'd be surprised how damp this place can get."

Charles was definitely talking about the castle. Though, in extremis, he wouldn't be above Hitting That. Lucille Bluth looked loaded.

There'd come a point in his struggling against the Macaulay family (Nana at its head, the uncles her enforcers, but Camilla the whisperer behind the throne, he was positive) that Charles had to realize he did have a marketable talent, one more potentially lucrative than playing piano in bars. Oh, he'd never stooped to anything really sordid. He just made friends with people who liked to give presents. Generous people. And when they were generous with him, Charles was generous with them. Quid pro quo, Q.E.D. The kinds of establishments he'd come to frequent didn't afford him a real patroness; he'd never made a living off this exchange of favors; but it kept him more comfortable than your average dish-washer or piano man, and the fact it wasn't his sole source of income kept him from having to think about what it

[thequeenbluth]

Lucille, not for the first time today, was confused.

"Yes, but why make it a castle in the first place? That's what I don't understand. It all seems a little..." she glanced around, "tacky, don't you think?"

The irony of one of the founding mothers of Motherboy, a woman who had notoriously dressed herself as Cher on multiple occasions, referring to something as tacky was completely lost on Lucille. She sighed.

"No one has taste any more."

[charlesmacaulay]

"Well, what else would it be?" Charles raised an eyebrow. "It really is a castle. I'd say it would be more tasteless to dress it up as something it isn't. And I don't think they could really get away with it if they tried."

[thequeenbluth]

"What are you talking about?" Lucille frowned at Charles, squinting curiously. "What castle? They didn't rebuild, did they? Why would they do that?"

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles stared at the woman blankly, his cigarette dangling between his fingers.

How old was she, anyway?!

"I think it was built a few hundred years ago."

[thequeenbluth]

For the first time, Lucille began to feel genuinely confused as to her whereabouts. She wondered if perhaps she wasn't in the O.C. Kansas anymore.

"A few hundred years?" she asked, then scoffed, waving a hand. "Don't be ridiculous. The oldest thing in Los Angeles is Dick Clark, and even then, not all of him--" she tapped her face meaningfully-- "if you know what I mean."

Still, she looked a little uneasy. "What kind of place do you think this is, anyway?"