An Acquired Taste: A Novel
Greetings, fans of Golden Age Hollywood! Below are the first two chapters of my first novel.
Additionally, here is some “behind the scenes” information readers may find interesting.
Links to books, articles, and podcasts that inspired and informed much of the novel.
Background notes on historical and literary references.
Historical photos of the 1940s related to the novel.
A playlist of songs mentioned in the novel.
Photos from the trip I took to LA to visit many of the locations mentioned.
Enjoy!
A work of literary fiction set in late 1940s Hollywood, An Acquired Taste is the story of two women, Mabs and Dagny, who grow up together on the eastern prairie of Saskatchewan then move to the “Dream Factory” seven years apart. They are affected in different ways by their experiences as they struggle to navigate stardom and, at times, their own strained friendship. It’s love. It’s lust. It’s fame. It’s despair. It’s An Acquired Taste.
The First Two Chapters
CHAPTER 1
TWENTY-FOUR HUNDRED MILES FROM PRAIRIE RIVER
We are all tied to our destiny, and there is no way we can liberate ourselves.
— Rita Hayworth
APRIL 1948
“Hello, Mabs,” she said lazily, as if only half paying attention. “Where’ve you been all my life?”
Of course, I knew Dagny lived here. After all, it was she who I followed from our home in Prairie River, Saskatchewan, albeit seven years after she left. Still, I never expected to see her walking down Sunset Boulevard that morning. More precisely, I never expected her to see me. It had been over a year since I moved. Because of nerves or timidity or who knows what, I never contacted her once I arrived and pushed my childhood friend to the back of my mind, as sad as that is to say. Yet here she was, a forlorn gaze in her eyes as if she was searching for me all this time. But, instead of being delighted to see me, she seemed crushed by the encounter.
We grew up together, two friends, sisters in every way but blood. Like Canadian versions of Mary and Laura Ingalls, we lived a plains life years before anyone knew of Little House on the Prairie. Times were different then, to be sure. Neither of our families had much. We used to line our shoes with cornhusks when we wore through the soles. And milk was a luxury. Everything was a luxury growing up in Eastern Saskatchewan, even life itself, with more than one in ten children dying before the age of two. Dagny and I made it out though. We always made it out.
Being the more handsome, she went first. Oh, I don’t say that with any sort of jealousy, only as a fact. Most consider me rather comely myself, and my looks certainly helped get me out as well—or perhaps they got me in. I’ll never truly know which. She possessed a more classic beauty, however.
I remember the day Dagny left quite clearly. The sky was a cornflower blue, like her eyes, and the prairie grasses had turned a golden yellow, like her hair. I accompanied her to the train station, and as we sat there, Kenny Baker serenaded us over the small wireless in the lobby with Love is Here to Stay. Now, here she was, standing in front of me, looking a bit out of place in her own life, out of place on this palm-lined street they call Sunset Boulevard.
The sunset. The end. But the end of what? A day? A lifetime? I thought little of Dagny or Hollywood, even though I was surrounded by it, until this moment. Something about meeting her on that spot and seeing the expression in her eyes, though, gave me a sense that this was not a chance encounter, at least not in the eyes of the Fates. Something gave me the sense that my life was about to drastically change. Would the sunset lead to a new dawn or would we live in darkness forevermore?
“Was it just yesterday we were playing with cornhusk dolls? Or maybe it was a lifetime ago. I seem to have lost my datebook.” Dagny said these words in a sorrowful and slightly confused manner, like a lost child looking for her mother. Even though many years had passed since I saw her last, and many more since we played with cornhusk dolls; even though I never expected to see her that morning, I knew I needed to help her find what she was looking for. I knew I needed to help her find herself.
“Come on, Dagny.” I took her arm in mine, in hopes of leading her to some place happier, some place with more humanity, as elusive as it was in Hollywood.
“No! I feel like being sad,” she exclaimed manically, a large smile gracing her lips. My, my. She was farther away from Prairie River than I thought. I persisted and we made our way to a nearby coffeeshop to sit down.
It was a dirty place, but somehow that made it more real. Bleach can cover up all sorts of ills, but does it ever really eliminate them? I realize that more than ever now. We tried to escape the ennui of Saskatchewan only to find that the real boredom lived in Hollywood.
Perhaps it was Dagny’s classic outer beauty that shielded her from the truth of what her inner self had become. Gazing into a mirror every morning and seeing something so perfect gazing back makes it easier to lie to yourself, to hide the real you with a wonderfully distorted reflection.
A woman walked by the window, dressed far too glamorously for the hour. As odd as it was for me to see the first few times, the fancy-dress-set now blended into the background, but not her. She outdid them all. With a gown of flowing satin, arm-length gloves, and a tiara and necklace that rivaled those at a Hapsburg Ball, her presence was glaring.
“I’ll follow that one. She likes big diamonds!” Dagny’s eyes flashed with a fire as she said this, possessed by the twin demons of jealousy and avarice. And like the desires of a demon-possessed soul, those diamonds were also an illusion. Nothing but gems made of paste that would melt when exposed to too much heat. Or too much truth. The shadows and the glass that lay before us, however, obscured them just enough to appear genuine.
“Oh, Dagny.” My soul emptied completely as I witnessed her devilish hunger.
“Mabs.” She got serious, folding her hands neatly in front of her, sitting up, and facing me squarely. “You don’t have to worry about me. Truly. I’ve finally made it! All those things we dreamt about when we were little girls, this is it. All the good fortune, none of the regrets.”
She’d gone from melancholy to manic to something in between all in the blink of an eye. I was having a hard time keeping up, and for a brief moment I believed her. After all, it would have been easier. Who wouldn’t want the life of a glittering starlet?
At the time, Norma Jeane had yet to become Marylin Monroe, so there was no way we could know the tragedy that would befall her fourteen years later. Nevertheless, I had a feeling, one perhaps rooted in my staunch Midwestern upbringing, that the fame and fortune surrounding us would only lead to fatality if I didn’t help Dagny escape. I knew it would be a dream morphing slowly into a nightmare.
“You know, I like to start my day off on a healthy note. Some whole-wheat toast with strawberry jam and a cup of English Breakfast tea.” Dagny smiled as if quite proud of herself for this one moment of the day devoted to prudence. I could smell the gin she’d imbibed the night before wafting off her like a cheap perfume. Never mind, too, that it was almost eleven. This was the beginning of her day though, so I decided to indulge her.
“I’ll have the same.”
The waiter wandered over.
“What’ll it be, ladies?” he said in a matter-of-fact way, a bit gruff but still polite.
“Two orders of whole-wheat toast with strawberry jam and two cups of English Breakfast tea,” Dagny smiled at him. She had a perky air to her now, any shadow of despair disappearing in the light of a radiant smile, a completely different person. If I’d met her at this moment, if I didn’t know she had run off to Hollywood to pursue stardom, if she’d ordered an egg salad sandwich or a bowl of soup—something a bit more appropriate for the hour—I would have thought her a housewife married to an engineer or doctor. Hardly the bohemian who sat before me now.
“Mabs, I’m attending a small gathering this evening at a friend’s home in Elysian Heights. I’d love for you to come and meet some of my coterie.”
She ended her sentence with a word that didn’t seem to fit her manner, at least not the manner I had been accustomed to seven years before. I wondered why she didn’t just call them friends. I wondered, too, if she always used words like coterie or was doing so now to put on airs. Maybe I was a stranger to her now. If she hadn’t called me by name when we saw each other on the sidewalk, I’d think us quite literally strangers.
Had it really been seven years? Were we really that far from Prairie River? I’d followed Dagny to Los Angeles on somewhat of a lark, desperate to shake off the monotony of a small Canadian town in the middle of nowhere. It was something thousands of girls my age did and are undoubtedly still doing.
While I hadn’t yet followed her all the way through the main gates of Warner Brothers, MGM, or wherever she was likely to be reaching for her star, I still caught enough of a glimpse of the world around me that I was beginning to realize the answer to those questions with every passing moment. Yes, it had been that long and that far. I also wondered how elysian this Elysian Heights she spoke of would be.
I should have left right then and caught the next train—any train—to get as far away from the dangers I saw before me. I’ve always felt a need to come to the rescue, though. One that has brought harm more than a few times.
When I was twelve, I wandered on the banks of the river and came across a baby muskrat. It was hurt, so I bent down to help it. Instead of being grateful, it bit my arm. I ran home, crying the whole way. My mother cleansed the wound, but in those days, in that place, even though it was not so long ago and not so far away, anti-septic was primitive.
My mother attempted a homemade Dakin’s Solution, but I wonder if washing it with well water would have been better. The wound became infected, and a fever set in. It lasted for three days, and I nearly died. All because I tried to help a baby animal.
I knew I risked injury again by sitting here in front of Dagny. I knew that this injury could end up much worse than the muskrat’s bite. I needed to try, though. Even if seven years had passed, in some ways no time had passed at all. I may have been a stranger to her now, but she wasn’t a stranger to me. She was the girl I’d spent an entire childhood with and though so many years had passed since we’d last seen each other, we’d gone through so much together in our youth that I couldn’t let her simply wither and die here amongst the palms.
At that moment, with the air outside a balmy seventy-eight degrees and the sun shining, I shivered and wished I were back home experiencing a frigid Canadian winter. I thought of my mother’s quilt wrapped around me as I sat by the fire, sipping some of her crude tea, made from whatever leaves and fruit rinds she could find in the garden.
While I was envisioning that poor tasting, yet familiar tea, our waiter brought over ours with breakfast. Or brunch. Or lunch. Whatever one has on a mid-morning Tuesday on Sunset Boulevard. I took a sip. It certainly tasted better than my mother’s tea, but I knew it wasn’t as comforting.
“You’ll simply love them. I know it.” Dagny continued on about the friends she was meeting that evening. “Struggling screenwriters, actors and actresses, like me still waiting for their chance to shine like the stars we know we’re meant to be. A few of the old guard, their days playing the lead behind them, but on to other things. They take the rest of us under their wings. Real people, Mabs. The best kind. You may think Hollywood is full of nothing but actors, both on screen and off, but so many of us enjoy the struggle. It’s what gives us hope.”
I smiled at Dagny. Not out of agreement or happiness or anything like that, but more so out of perplexity. She definitely wasn’t the girl I said goodbye to seven years before. I wasn’t sure who she’d become. I wasn’t sure she knew who she was. Her mood flipped back and forth by the minute, like a child’s seesaw. Up and down. Down and up.
She reached across the table and cupped my hands as they cupped my tea. “Oh, Mabs, you will come, won’t you? You must start meeting people in this town, especially people who can pull you out of your current station, help you to live a little—or a lot. I just know there’s someone inside you dying to break out.”
Was there? But how did she know? How did she know my current station for that matter? After all, she had only run into me less than an hour before and I’d barely told her anything. Perhaps she was now yearning for a bit of her childhood as I was. Perhaps I provided the only connection.
Maybe she was right about the inner-me as well. Maybe it wasn’t she who needed saving. Maybe it was me. In the last half-hour, my world had flipped. I suddenly had no sense of true north.
I thought back to the day I left Prairie River. I wanted adventure then. I even dreamed occasionally of the silver screen like Dagny had, although not to her extent. Yet, I’d lived in Los Angeles for almost a year, renting a small apartment in Santa Monica, and done none of it.
Sure, I had a lovely life, even if it was a bit quotidian. I spent evenings strolling along the pier, watching the sun sink into the Pacific. The location was everything I’d have hoped for when I was young, if I’d known what to hope for. But it also offered an interesting duplicity. Both feelings of discovery and nostalgia welled up inside me every time I gazed out across the waves. I never saw the ocean before moving to Los Angeles. At the same time, though, the great expanse of it all, extending flat out to the horizon, reminded me of the prairie back home. A sea of water. A sea of grass. A sea of tranquility.
Considering I’d lived here for as long as I had, considering the impetus that had pushed me on the train a year ago, Dagny was right. I really hadn’t met many people, writers, actors, or otherwise. I really hadn’t experienced any kind of adventure. The closest I ever came was sitting in the library devouring books like Robinson Crusoe. And at twenty-four, I wasn’t getting any younger.
“Oh, why not?!” I exclaimed. The cheeriness in my own voice surprised me. As soon as I said the words, I knew there were several good answers to that question and likely a few bad ones.
“Splendid! Now, we simply must find something to wear!” My doubts about Dagny began to fade as she said this. She was so elated at the prospect of me accompanying her to this little soiree of hers. But was it truly genuine? Or, as the saying goes, was it simply a case of misery loving company? One thing I knew for sure, she didn’t know herself, any more than I did.
CHAPTER 2
NEW SHOES AND NIÇOISE
It's a chain of accidents. When you step into Hollywood, you wind yourself into thousands of chains of accidents. If all of the thousands happen to come out exactly right—and the chance of that figures out to be one in eight million—then you'll be a star.
— Clark Gable
It was fun getting all dolled up that afternoon. I’d only ever purchased one piece of clothing from a store in my life, having sewn everything else myself. I suspect Dagny knew this too, for she didn’t allow me to pay for a single thing that day.
We went from store to store, both trying on new attire for that evening. It was a whirlwind afternoon, and I allowed myself to be carried over to it. At one store, I tried on a dress while in a room walled with three mirrors. Three! I could see how one might get used to such a life.
Dagny’s checks papered four different places, and I wondered if they were real. The salesgirls all seemed to know her well enough though, treating us both like the stars she, at least, wished we were. Perhaps she had all the right, or at least the money, to live as she did.
I would come to know the truth much later, when so much of our lives came crashing down like a condemned building. And like the dust that spreads out from such an implosion, so too did the effects of that lifestyle, covering all of us with a dreadful patina of despair. Unlike the truth, though, which can set us free, the truth became a prison—even a death sentence—for so many of the rest of us.
“Dresses. Yes. Purses. Yes. Shoes. Yes. Now, we must do something about our hair!” I briefly wondered again if this was the small gathering of friends she spoke of or a film premiere only she knew about; a film in which she was producer, director, lead actress, and costume designer. Again, I’m certain she didn’t know either.
“I know. I’ll give Charles a call. He works under Sydney Guilaroff. Do you know Sydney?” She was talking a so quickly, I could hardly keep up, let alone respond. Even if I had been able to, I barely knew what a hairstylist was. “Of course you don’t, poor dear. Well, you will soon enough. He occasionally lunches at Chateau Marmont.”
I knew the hotel, but then again, so did everyone who’d ever set foot in Hollywood in the forties. Was this Dagny’s way of telling me that she too lunched at a place where a roast beef sandwich cost the better part of my weekly paycheck?
We stopped at a phone booth, and she pulled a nickel out of her purse.
“Hello, Charles? It’s Dagny. I’m wondering if you can fit my friend Mabs and me in this afternoon. Four o’clock? That will be lovely.” She hung up the receiver and turned to me.
“Four o’clock. That will give us just enough time for a spot of lunch and time to get dressed at my apartment before Kenneth picks us up at six. I know it’s rather an early evening, but Philomena likes her sleep. As it is, we usually end up chatting until way past midnight.
“Now, I was rather hoping for a swim but perhaps some other time. I like the pool at the Bel-Air. They have the most charming attendants. There’s this one young man, Robbie Wagner. I just know he’ll go on to do big things one day. Oh, Mabs, we will have so much fun now that we are together again!”
Sydney Guilaroff. Chateau Marmont. The pool at the Bel-Air. I wasn’t sure if it was all the excitement or the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything but a piece of toast since eight o’clock that morning, but my head was beginning to spin. Dagny’s mention of lunch settled it on the latter.
We stopped into a cafe, much cleaner and more upscale than the last one, and she ordered us some Niçoise salads. Even that was a new experience. Until then, the only tuna I ate came from a can. I briefly wondered if the kitchen failed to cook ours before Dagny pierced hers with a fork.
“Oh, do look at me, Mabs! Here I’ve been carrying on all afternoon about my life, which must seem terribly boresome to you. . . ." I suspect she meant boorish, not boring, but I found her mistake rather endearing. The veneer had come off her polished demeanor for a brief moment, and she was, once again, the schoolgirl I knew back home who always needed my help with her writing assignments. “Do tell me about yourself! What have you been doing these past few years?”
Was she being liberal with the word few or had the time flown by so quickly for her that she really thought it had been three years instead of seven? Did she even remember me or was there another girl out there named Mabs who bore a similar resemblance? Perhaps the name Mabs was shorthand for any girl she didn’t know but should have, the same way some men call each other Mac or Buddy.
I decided to dismiss these thoughts, however. If anything, I could view this as some sort of experiment, a case study into the Hollywood starlet, or whatever she was—or thought she was.
“Well, I left home about three years ago, but only made it as far as Vancouver the first time before turning back. I guess I’m not like you, Dagny. It took a lot of courage for me to set out from Prairie River on my own. Heaven knows the only time I ever ventured farther than Porcupine Plain was when we all went down to Regina when we were ten. Oh, Dagny, I’ve always admired how independent you are. I’ve always looked up to you!” I was beginning to gush and realized so. Steadying myself, I continued on with more composure, hoping she hadn’t noticed my brief display of childish giddiness.
“I finally mustered up the courage last February to move down here and pursue those silly childhood dreams of fame and fortune. I suppose part of me didn’t want to endure any more of those cold winters. When I saw an advertisement in Chatelaine—I don’t even remember what it was for now—which had sunshine and palm trees, I knew I simply had to go.”
“Hmm. You do have a point. The sunshine and palm trees are nice. I haven’t paid much notice of them in years, to be honest. Rather like breathing,” Dagny said a bit absent-mindedly as if she’d heard nothing I’d said but that last line.
“I packed a small suitcase that evening; said goodbye to Mother, Father, and Olivia; and caught the next morning’s train for Vancouver. Then it was on to Los Angeles,” I continued.
“It was foolishly impulsive of me, I know. After all, despite surviving almost solely on soda crackers nicked from the Dining Car, by the time I arrived, I had but ten dollars to my name, barely enough to pay for a week’s rent at a boarding house. Undoubtedly, you encountered much the same predicament when you arrived.”
In fact, I was rather certain that she hadn’t experienced any predicaments at all. Firstly, she’d always been more brash and able to ingratiate herself into getting things for free. Secondly, unlike my impulsive departure, I distinctly remember Dagny had saved up for nearly three years before hers. I’d even contributed a few dollars of my own; a tangible gesture, not so much toward her, but toward myself. At the time, I never suspected I’d leave Prairie River. Living vicariously through her letters and the rare phone call would be the closest I ever hoped to get.
I really should have been hurt that those letters and phone calls lasted only four months. The thought of bringing it up did arise, but I quickly suppressed it, the anxiety of the possible tension it could raise between us being too much.
Dagny replied. “Mabs, darling, that’s a wonderful story! I should be the one in awe of you. What you did took far more courage than I ever had. To board a train like that on an impulse? I may have gone first, but what did I know back then? I was a stupid young git, barely out of pigtails, pining after Tyrone Power. It was more recklessness than courage on my part.” Then she suddenly turned morose once again. “And I never had your family…”
The last sentence hit me especially hard as it trailed off like the smoke from a just extinguished candle. Of course, it didn’t come as the slightest surprise. Dagny was always my sister just as much, if not more, than my own sister. Dagny’s mother had died while giving birth to what would have been her only sister if she, too, had survived. Her father, greatly impacted by the loss, turned so cold and distant, he was dead himself, if only in spirit.
While we were both barely six at the time, I grieved alongside her. In the end, though, despite my family’s care for her, she had to grow up more quickly. Maybe this is what gave her so much confidence. Maybe she wasn’t putting up a facade. Or maybe, even though it had been nearly two decades since her mother died, she was still torn between the necessity of independence and the yearning to be taken care of once again.
At that moment, even though only four hours had passed since we’d met again after so long an absence, I felt I knew her better than I knew anyone.
“Escape to Hollywood. Star in your own life.” The last of my thoughts escaped my mind as a quiet murmur from between my lips.
“What’s that, Mabs? Who’s life? Are you finally getting the acting bug? We all do, you know. I can introduce you to my agent. He’s not the biggest player in town, but he gets me enough auditions that I can reasonably call myself an actress without having to withstand the snickers of too many people at dinner.” As she spoke, she waved her fork about as if conducting the words from her mouth. I couldn’t help but follow it back and forth.
“What? No. I’m sorry.” She’d shaken me back to reality not so much by her words or even how she’d said them but more so by the way she’d, once again, gone from playing the part of the injured lamb to that of the lioness. She was back to being quite pertly.
“Oh, that’s okay, dear. How do you like your tuna?” She said, half-smirking, as if the last few minutes of conversation hadn’t taken place. “Do you remember that summer back home when we thought ourselves lucky enough to get a can of salmon? Quite a change now, isn’t it?!” Her eyes lit up at both the reminiscence and the realization that she was so far beyond canned salmon now.
“But do go on with your story. You arrived last February? Why has it taken this long for us to connect? Had I not seen you on the street earlier, I wonder if we’d ever have met again. But that is my fault. I know I never wrote to you, never called. It’s just this lifestyle down here. Always a dinner. Always a day at the beach. Always a screen test. There simply isn’t time!” she chattered on breathlessly.
Following such a torrent of questions with such a series of excuses left me wondering if they were pat answers she gave to all those she jilted or if she truly was sorry to have let our parting be so prolonged. I wondered, too, if her wordiness was due in part to the nerves of someone putting on airs or if she just liked to talk. Or maybe her life was that exciting. I was suddenly drawn toward her, drawn toward the life she spoke of, but nervous about it at the same time, like the first time one walks out onto the end of a high dive and gazes down into the pool below. I decided to let these thoughts remain unspoken.
“It’s okay. I understand.” How else was I going to reply? “When I arrived in Los Angeles, I needed a job. As luck would have it, pasted to a wall in the train station was an advertisement for a secretarial position. Not knowing how to type, I was skeptical that they’d hire me, but I chose to apply anyway, and—what do you know—they did!”
I thought back to that day. I had been rather nervous. Of course, I knew later that the man who hired me cared more about the length of my hemline than the number of words I could type in a minute.
“I didn’t really give thought to, well, much of anything on the journey down. I felt nothing but excitement until the reality hit. I had no job, no place to stay, didn’t know a soul and. . . .” I paused for a moment, realizing I was now the one who would have to come clean about my reticence to find her. “I had every intention of finding you when I arrived but was nervous about what our reunion would be like. Scared even. So, I put it off, telling myself I was just mustering up the courage to do so, telling myself I needed to get settled so you wouldn’t think less of me or feel the need to take me in. Then the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months. I got into a routine that, honestly, I grew rather accustomed to. At that point, I believed the moment had passed.”
“Mabs, I would have taken you in in a heartbeat. You shouldn’t have been nervous about that. And it wouldn’t have been out of pity. After all, you cared for me for so long when we were children. I could never repay that kindness in full.” This time, she sounded truly genuine. I put down my fork and reached my hand across the table to touch hers.
“Thank you, Dagny. That means a lot.”
She placed her other hand over mine and we sat in silence for a moment, each of us remembering how we’d cared for the other so long ago; how we’d sat together on the bench outside the drug store reading discarded copies of Chatelaine, wishing to be as elegant as the women in its pages; giggling at the pictures of men—boys really, but so much older and worldly than we ever imagined we would be. That is, until she dared to imagine. That must have been the beginning of it all. Her quest for stardom began on that bench with an advertisement for a Fame and Fortune contest.
As if reading my mind, Dagny lent voice to my memory. “Mabs, do you remember when we were schoolgirls and we read old copies of Chatelaine? Do you remember what I said to you on one of those particularly warm afternoons when the thickness of the air felt like it was going to crush us out of existence? Do you remember what I said about moving away?”
I searched my mind, and it didn’t take long before it settled on the memory I knew she was referring to. “There’s nothing for us here, Mabs,” I replied, hearing every word in my mind as clearly as if she said them for the first time right then. “The whole world exists outside this town just waiting to be savored. And I don’t mean Saskatoon or Regina. I don’t even mean Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver. I dream of a place called Hollywood!” We were twice that age now but, at that moment, I was still just a naive twelve-year-old.
In my mind, the Dagny of seven years ago was the twenty-four-year-old who sat before me. I tried to picture us both then, but her face as it was now, even the dress she was wearing, remained as part of the memory.
She had always been the older one, even if she was three months younger. She’d even matured physically before I had, as if the gods knew she needed to be ready for the path she chose.
“How did you know so much about Hollywood back then? Our home was so sheltered. I barely knew anything of Regina, even less about Toronto.”
“Chatelaine wasn’t the only thing I read.” She gave me a sly look but didn’t reveal her secret. “But do go on! You must have entertained yourself with more than just idle chatter while swimming in the steno pool.” She laughed, pleased with her bon mot. I didn’t find it amusing.
In fact, I rather detested the other girls at work. Or perhaps I envied them. While they were no match for the woman seated across from me, they were infinitely more worldly than I was, even if they came from places as remote as Prairie River, places with exotic-sounding names like San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara. While I pondered this, I realized I actually saw more of the world on my two-week journey from the Canadian Plains than they had. I’d traveled more than twenty-four hundred miles. They’d traveled fewer than two hundred and fifty. Funny, it had never quite hit me until now, and the realization gave me confidence. Dagny was right. I was the more courageous one.
“Maybe all my courage was spent simply getting on that train to come here. Maybe I found comfort in my little apartment and the occasional walks on the Santa Monica Pier. Honestly, I can’t say I did much else. Nor do I even now. I take in the occasional picture at the movie house, but that’s it, really.” I suddenly felt sad, ashamed even. Had I truly wasted the past year? How worldly could I claim to be if I’d seen no more of the world than those girls in the office, but for what was on the other side of a train window?
Dagny must have sensed my disappointment.
“Well, Mabs, that all ends today. We’re going to get all dolled up in these new dresses, Charles is going to give you a wonderful new ’do, and then we’re going to attend the most marvelous evening of your life. And I promise, this is only the beginning. Now, let’s get the bill and be on our way!”
I should have been putty in her hands; she my Svengali, me her Trilby. But while I did feel myself falling deeper and deeper under her spell, something else inside me, that schoolgirl I thought I’d left behind in Prairie River, told me to be wary. I should have listened, but this lunch of raw tuna; the new dress sitting in a box beside me; this man, Charles, who was to transform me in less than an hour; even the fancifully dressed woman who’d passed by the window earlier and caught Dagny’s eye; all of these things were conspiring to pull me into a place I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.
“Do you mean it, Dagny? Do you really mean it?” I wanted her to say no. I wanted her to throw back her head and let out a big laugh; to tell me it was all a ruse. I wanted her to be someone else. Literally. An actress playing Dagny. I suddenly yearned for home and a cup of my mother’s tea, as awful tasting as it was.
“Heaven’s yes, dear! Now let’s go!” Dagny exclaimed.