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Dylan smiled as she stepped into the elevator, feeling the slight weight of the shoes in the bag slung over her shoulder. Tonight had been a rare good night.
‘How you doing?’ she heard as the elevator doors opened and she saw a handsome man leaning against the opposite wall, one hand in the pocket of his tuxedo pants as though he was posing for a cologne advertisement.
It was both cheesy and funny, and she started to laugh.
‘What?’ he asked, looking behind him.
As he turned, she pressed the button and the doors of the elevator closed again, leaving her laughing out loud.
Was he serious? He probably worked that move in the mirror over and over before trying it on countless girls. Maybe some fell for it, but not Dylan. She liked boys who were less handsome and less presumptuous, guys who made her laugh and didn’t act like they were in a perfume ad.
So far she hadn’t met anyone close to decent in LA. Every guy wanted to be an actor, and assumed Dylan wanted the same thing. They all asked her who her manager was, who was her agent? Would she do nudity?
Checking her phone, she saw it was after two in the morning and she sighed as she walked towards the cab rank. Even though the cab was expensive, at least she’d get home to her studio apartment in Koreatown in time for a few hours’ sleep before her next shift.
She had to be at work again in five hours’ time, waitressing at a breakfast in a private home in the Hollywood Hills. She had begged for the shift as it was extra money and she could then afford to take two days off for her research.
Her furnished apartment was cheap because the owners were planning on pulling it down and rebuilding on the site, but according to her new neighbour they’d been saying that for ten years and there was still no sign of any development.
At seven hundred and twenty dollars a month, the apartment was manageable, just. There was no way Dylan would ask her parents for help. Not after what she knew now.
Inside her one room, she pulled her laptop out from under the mattress—it was the only thing in her room of any value—and opened it to check her emails.
An overflowing laundry basket sat in one corner, and a bowl half-eaten ramen noodles sat on the linoleum floor.
Her mom would freak if she saw how messy her room was, she thought, making a mental notes to clean it after tomorrow’s shift.
Nothing of any importance, she thought crossly as she slammed the laptop shut and went and lay back on the uncomfortable single bed that had come with the apartment, along with a dripping sink and some oversized cockroaches. They probably had fillers also, she thought, thinking of some of the faces she had seen at the party that night.
Why did people think they had to do that to their faces? she wondered as she rolled over on the lumpy mattress, her eye caught by the gift bag on the floor.
Clambering out of bed, she put on the strappy shoes and stood up. Maggie Hall was right, they hurt like hell, but they looked amazing. Taking her phone, she sent a picture of them to Addie with the text: Maggie Hall let me walk in her shoes. They are now mine.
It was six in the morning in New York, no chance Addie would be awake, but she knew her friend would be thrilled.
Tottering back to the bed, Dylan lay down again and lifted one leg to admire the shoe. What did shoes like this even cost? she wondered idly, as her phone started ringing.
‘Why the hell are you awake?’ Dylan said, as soon as she saw Addie’s number.
‘I wasn’t really, but I heard the message come through and saw it was from you. How the hell do you have Maggie Hall’s shoes on?’
Addie’s voice was groggy but excited, and Dylan laughed.
‘You didn’t need to call me now, Ads,’ she said. ‘I meant it to be a surprise for when you woke up.’
‘I always keep my phone on,’ said Addie. ‘Now spill.’
Dylan told her all about her night and her encounter with Maggie in the bathroom. Addie, as she’d expected, was duly impressed.
‘God, I wish I had your life! Instead I’m stuck here, it’s snowing, it’s boring, and I have no idea why I’m studying when my degree is just a ticket to working at Starbucks for the rest of my life.’
‘You don’t have to do that course,’ Dylan said for the one hundredth time.
Like most of Dylan’s friends from her prestigious private school, she and Addie had been spoiled for choice when it came to deciding which college to attend. Addie had ending up enrolling in a comparative literature degree because she didn’t know what else to do.
‘Show me the shoes again, without your ugly feet in them,’ Addie demanded, sounding more awake by the second.
Dylan obediently took off the shoes and sent the new photo. ‘She asked for my number,’ she said, when she put the phone back to her ear.
‘For what? Like in a date? Is she a closet lesbian?’ Addie squealed.
‘No, you tawdry hoe, I told her I’m looking for work and she said sometimes her assistant needs an assistant.’
‘Jesus,’ said Addie, ‘what a world.’
‘I know, right?’
‘How’s the search? Any more leads?’
Dylan was a smart girl, with a four-point average and acceptance letters to both Brown and Wellesley, so why was her task proving so hard?
‘None. I feel like I’m going about it in completely the wrong way. I can’t find anything. I’ve contacted the agencies, but no one will give me any information unless I have both parents’ signatures because I’m under twenty-one.’
Addie paused. ‘You know, babe, you could just ask your mom and dad who your birth mother was and save yourself all this trouble?’
‘I can’t,’ said Dylan. ‘It would kill Dad.’ She put on the heels again and flopped back on the bed. ‘Besides, I don’t think I could stand to hear any more of their lies right now.’
‘I get it,’ said Addie softly.
Dylan nodded, forgetting for a moment that Addie couldn’t see her. This was why she and Addie were so close. Addie really did get it, she got everything about Dylan, even her hare-brained scheme to head to LA and find her birth mother.
‘Hey, I have to crash. Gotta be at another job in a few hours,’ said Dylan, yawning.
‘Okay, sleep well, I love ya, you crazy bitch.’
‘Love you too, loser,’ said Dylan, and she went to sleep, still wearing Maggie’s shoes.
West Virginia
September 1995
Shay Harman looked at the pregnancy test and shook it vigorously.
‘It’s not a Magic 8 Ball,’ her friend Krista said, as she swung her skinny legs from her perch on the bench in the mall’s public toilet.
‘I wish it was,’ said Shay.
Someone had once left a cigarette on the bench, burning the lino into a perfect groove, which Krista now lay her finger in.
‘What are you going to do?’ Krista asked.
‘Go back and finish my shift,’ said Shay. ‘I’ll think about it later.’ Denial was always a good choice in the face of chaos, she thought.
Back at the Great American Cookies stand, the smell of the dough made Shay feel ill. She fought down the nausea, staring out at the crowd in the mall.
She didn’t feel like she belonged there, but soon she would become one of the throng, pushing a second-hand pram and living on welfare.
‘You okay, honey?’ asked her coworker Jackie.
Shay had no idea how old Jackie was. But as far as she could tell, after four babies in six years, Jackie wasn’t living, just existing, sleepwalking through her shifts at the cookie stand.
Jackie said she was lucky—she and her husband both had jobs and her kids went to school—but Shay couldn’t work out what was so lucky about that. Wasn’t that something everyone should have?
This attitude had gotten her into trouble with her foster families.
‘You need to be more grateful for what you get,’ said the social worker.
Eventually the social worker convinced Shay’s grandmother to take her in. At least Shay didn’t have to pretend to be grateful then. She knew her grammy only agreed so she’d get the extra welfare cheque for her dead son’s only child.
Shay served a teenage girl whose swelling stomach couldn’t be hidden by the oversized Disneyland sweatshirt. Was everyone pregnant all of a sudden?
Was she really any different to this girl? Shay wondered. Was her future now to raise a baby when she could hardly raise herself? And what would Grammy say when she went home to the trailer and told her she was pregnant to the first guy she’d slept with?
Bud Harris wasn’t her boyfriend. She’d only had sex with him because she’d yearned for someone’s loving touch. She knew damn well he wouldn’t want this baby; he was already working down the mines, never calling Shay again after he had left school.
Finally the shift ended and she was relieved to find Krista waiting for her.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Shay as she walked up to her best friend.
‘Sure,’ said Krista, tossing her bleached hair over her shoulder, ‘but I don’t want to go to my place, they’re all down on their knees praying for something that doesn’t include me.’
Shay laughed wryly. Some foster homes were better than others, but each had its own special way of reminding you that you didn’t quite fit in. It might be special food that wasn’t for the welfare kids, or second-hand clothing that was the wrong size. In Krista’s current ‘home’, it was prayer.
Shay looked around. ‘I don’t know where we can go,’ she said, and then she started to cry.
‘Hush now,’ Krista said, in that voice that always calmed Shay. ‘I’ll think of something.’
And Shay nodded, knowing that Krista would. She had never once let her down.
Krista’s eyes lit up and she smiled the magnificent smile that made social workers believe she really had changed this time.
Soon, Shay and Krista were sitting up the back in the only movie theatre in town, let in for free by the pimple-faced projectionist who had a thing for Krista.
‘What’s the film?’ whispered Shay.
‘Matilda,’ whispered Krista. ‘It’s about a little girl who uses her magic to get her revenge on her shitty family and school, and finds a new mom to adopt her. I’ve seen it twice already, it’s my favourite film ever.’
Shay smiled and took Krista’s hand and squeezed it tight.
‘Thank you,’ she said and Krista smiled in the darkness as the screen flickered to life.
Chapter 4 (#ue3922b53-1c39-52b3-a21e-b444c5ff5ebd)
Zoe was driving out to Malibu in her new Jaguar sports car, the top was down and Bruno Mars was blaring out of the stereo. The overcast day couldn’t dull Zoe’s mood. Even when it was turning to winter, it wasn’t cold. She hated being cold almost as much as she hated being overlooked just because she was a woman. People assumed she was the mother hen of her clients, and to some extent she was, but this new deal with Jeff Beerman meant she was now a power-player. She couldn’t wait to tell Hugh the news about the deal and how well she had played her hand at the party, when her phone rang.
Christ it wasn’t even eight a.m. and people were hassling her already? The morning after the Oscars should be a public holiday in Hollywood, she thought crossly as she pressed the answer button on her steering wheel.
‘Zoe Greene.’
‘Zoe, it’s Rachel Fein, from Hollywood Reporter,’ came the nasal tones of the woman who could make or break a film with a single article.
‘Rachel, sorry I didn’t see you last night. How are you?’ said Zoe silkily.
‘You may not have seen me, but everyone saw you,’ laughed Rachel. ‘So what’s the dealio with you and Jeff Beerman? Is it business or pleasure?’
The dealio? Zoe rolled her eyes as she turned the corner and took the highway towards Malibu.
‘Rachel, we both know I’m too old and too smart to be anything other than business in Jeff’s life,’ she said.
Jeff’s three ex-wives would all attest to his penchant for young starlets, which was well known in the industry. Rumour had it that his last marriage had cost him twenty-seven million dollars.
‘So it’s true you’re executive producing The Art of Love with Jeff and Palladium Pictures?’ Rachel asked.
Zoe gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, imagining it was Rachel’s neck.
‘I can’t comment on any deals right now. But when I have an announcement to make, you’ll be the first to know,’ she answered. Just as soon as I’ve signed the papers, she thought.
‘I see. Well, is it true that Palladium Pictures is in financial trouble, and that Jeff Beerman has put up his own money to get this project off the ground?’
Zoe glanced in the rear-view mirror and pulled over sharply to the side of the highway.
‘Rachel, I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said evenly. Stay calm, girl, she reminded herself. You’ve got this.
‘Then I suggest you find out before you sign anything because you might find you just sold yourself, your writer and the book of a lifetime to a man who a few people are saying is on the downhill slide.’
‘What people? What are they saying?’ Zoe tried to keep her voice calm, as the cars went whizzing by her. Everyone was going in the right direction and here was Rachel telling her she wasn’t and if anyone knew what the state of affairs were with Jeff, Rachel knew.
‘Zoe, not everyone can stay on top for ever, not even Jeff Beerman. I’ve just heard a few money men saying Jeff needs a hit and soon. I’m just warning you. Anyway, you’ve given me a few leads over the years; I’m giving you one now.’
The line went dead and Zoe sat in the car staring at the road ahead.
This isn’t how it’s meant to play out, she thought, dialling Jeff’s number, knowing he would be in his office. People may question his morals but they could never question his work ethic.
‘Jeff Beerman’s office,’ an assistant answered.
‘Zoe Greene for Jeff,’ she said, tapping on the steering wheel with her fingernail.
‘Greene, how’s the head this morning?’ he asked, his voice filled with cheer.
