Page 13 of Glamorous Notions

Chapter 12

Two weeks later, Lena had a new birth certificate and a new name: Lena Taylor. The last name had come to her in a flash, as if she’d been subconsciously ruminating on it all this time, and it was perfect, wasn’t it, for the daughter of a dressmaker who wanted to be a fashion designer? Taylor/tailor ... she liked the play of it, the way it so easily rolled off her tongue, and that perfect play gave her even more confidence. She told Charlie to make her older on her birth certificate. She was twenty-six now instead of twenty-two—it seemed a more respectable age for a fashion designer.

Now all she needed was a job. She spent hours perusing the classified ads, and when she wasn’t doing that, she sketched and tried hard not to think of Rome, or Julia, but it was difficult. Everything reminded her of Julia—the blond hair that Julia had suggested, the makeup Lena now wore religiously. “You have such good bones.” Everything Lena had become had been Julia’s doing, but it was so much more than that. Julia’s scent, her smile haunted Lena at the oddest times, so she would spin around, half expecting to see Julia behind her, and when she wasn’t, Lena could barely contain her tears. She reminded herself that Julia had lied to her, but that only made it worse. Grief and fear were a terrible combination and an unbearable weight.

Lena strolled Ocean Front Walk and listened to the sounds coming from the seedy amusement park and watched the fog roll in and out and jumped at every shadow. She’d thrown the bag she’d meant to take to Venice in the closet, unpacked. She couldn’t even look at it without feeling too many things she could not unravel. There was nothing in it she needed. She couldn’t wear any of the clothes she’d packed without remembering the anticipation with which she’d packed them, and how everything had ended up.

Harvey had told her to pretend it never happened. She tried.

Then one Sunday, Harvey pulled on his jacket to go out.

“Tell me you aren’t going,” Charlie said, looking up from the newspaper. “What have I told you about this?”

“Going where?” Lena sat on the couch, working on one of her designs. It was Sunday, and the smell of the toasted babka and coffee they’d had for a late breakfast still lingered.

Harvey rolled his eyes. “It’s interesting, and I’m bored.”

Charlie told her, “Remember the artists I told you about? Harvey’s taken to hanging out with them and the degenerate poets they waste time with.”

“Degenerates?”

“They aren’t degenerates,” Harvey protested.

“They talk of revolution and making art when the bombs fall and kill us all, when what they really mean is that they’re going to smoke reefer and write bad poetry. What is that but degenerate?”

“Revolution?” Lena was instantly wary. “You mean they’re communists?”

Harvey put his finger to his lips, reminding Lena that the house might be bugged. “Oh no, I doubt it.” But he didn’t sound convinced, or more likely, it was a deliberate lie, given Charlie’s grimace. “Most of them don’t know what they are except young and rebelling against whatever they can. They’re harmless fools. The talk is interesting, though. It reminds me of the old days.”

“The old days being what got us arrested—at least part of the reason.” Charlie lowered his voice to a bare whisper and rattled the newspaper to muffle his words further. “And some of them are dangerous enough that they’ve forged Lena a birth certificate.”

“I think I agree with Charlie,” Lena said. “You’re on an FBI watch list, Harvey. It’s probably not a good idea—”

“They’re bohemians, not Reds, and they idolize Charlie Parker, for God’s sake. I told you they’re harmless. Come with me if you want, Lena. You can tell Charlie I’m right.”

Charlie met Lena’s gaze and shrugged. “Go ahead. You can tell Harvey I’m the one who’s right. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you would.”

Lena set down her sketchbook. “Where is this meeting?”

“At a guy named Larry Lipton’s place. He’s in his forties, and he’s a writer. I think he likes the whole benevolent-benefactor role. Very professorial and kind of a hipster. You’ll like him. Come on, let’s go.”

Lena went only because she was worried and wanted to help Charlie convince Harvey that attending was a bad idea. She shouldn’t associate with anyone who sounded remotely like a communist, and neither should Harvey. If what Charlie said was true, these people were probably being watched. She was in hiding, and she’d had her fill of all that in Italy.

Larry Lipton’s cottage was on Park, between the seedy promenade and Pacific, which marked the better neighborhood beyond. It was bigger than the houses around it, with an upper- and lower-story sitting porch, and a shallow yard that looked like it hadn’t been mowed in a month or more.

“Every Sunday he has this gathering,” Harvey explained to her. “All the artists in the neighborhood go. I think it’s partly because he serves lemonade and beer and potato chips and for half of them it’s the only thing they eat all week.”

The living room was already packed when they went inside, every square inch of seating taken up, the couches and the chairs but also every inch of floor. Wineglasses and beer bottles, spilling ashtrays, several bowls of potato chips spread about. There were mostly men, but a few women, and Harvey urged some to move closer together to make room for the two of them to sit on the floor. She expected him to introduce her to their host, but Larry Lipton was moving busily about, and there didn’t seem to be a need. Lipton was short, with a round face and large eyes behind his round-framed glasses, and Lena watched him curiously while everyone got settled. He was the oldest person there, and Harvey was right, he had a professorial air about him, or so she thought, until he went to the record player below a long shelf of records—the collection was massive—and pulled one from a pile he’d obviously selected for the meeting.

“Let’s start the magic circle with Bird today.”

Harvey hadn’t been wrong about the idolization of Charlie Parker. Everyone murmured in agreement, the record started, and someone brought out a can of pot and began rolling cigarettes. The room was already heavy with tobacco smoke from cigarettes and from the cigar Larry Lipton puffed away on. In a way it reminded her of Rome, and La Grotta, though there wasn’t a bar and the only drinks were beer and wine and lemonade, and no one was making pasta. But it had the same atmosphere of free thought and artists and no one caring about how they dressed or convention, and the jazz winding through everything, and Lena half expected to see Julia leaning in a corner, smoking and smiling, though there was no one here like her.

But the memory, which was both good and heartbreaking, also made Lena acutely uncomfortable. She had a fleeting memory of her parents warning her about such things, something she should have remembered in Rome, she thought ruefully. Though truthfully she’d been too awestruck there to see it. Now she knew better. Maybe Harvey could lie to himself about how dangerous meetings like this could be now—all this free thought could lead to authorities like the FBI classifying a person as a radical. She would remind Harvey of that the moment they were out of here.

“I spent the whole week in Glendale,” said one of the men on the floor. “Taking classes. I’m not going back. It feels good to be here after that. The squares, the teachers, the academics, man, they stifle real thoughts.”

“What’s a square?” Lena asked.

The man, who was blond and rangy, said, “Someone who worships success and work and things , man. Like your dad or my dad. Like all parents. Like that guy on the radio selling cars and toothpaste. Who cares if the world is blown to smithereens tomorrow? At least we’ll have white teeth and a Chevrolet.”

The curly-haired man rolling the reefers shook his head. “Man, that is bleak.”

“It’s true, though. The ‘people’s capitalism.’ What a joke. Like we’re partners with our corporate overlords. Yeah, man, we all share in prosperity. Any of them been to Pension Row lately?” The blond man spoke of the old luxury hotels on the promenade, too derelict to renovate but too expensive to tear down, that were now slums that housed the poor elderly. “Ha. It don’t matter though, we’ll all be gone in a blast.” He made an explosive sound, followed by a gesture, fists violently opened, fingers flung wide. “Sayonara, baby.”

The curly-haired man winced and shook his head. He lit the reefer and inhaled, took another drag, and then passed it along.

Another one said, “At least we’re living the life until then.”

“What does that mean to you?” Larry Lipton asked. “‘The life’?”

“Simplicity,” one called out.

“Art and beauty,” called another.

“Freedom!” shouted a third.

“What does freedom mean, though?” Larry puffed on his cigar. Charlie Parker’s saxophone wailed.

“Resisting the machine!” said someone else.

“Saying no to the system!”

“Or maybe ... infiltrating the system. Changing it from the inside out.”

All the rest had sounded naive and a bit stupid, but not that. Lena looked to its source. The man who’d spoken sat across the room, on the floor, his knees drawn up, though he looked tall. Tall and dark and slim. He had a weary air about him, too, as if the world had tired him out, and in that way he appeared different from the others, who had that innocence that came from book philosophy and poverty taken on like a mantle, that art-for-art’s-sake sort of suffering when the suffering was your choice.

He didn’t have the shabby look of the others, either, but wore tan trousers and a Hawaiian shirt. Even so, he didn’t stand out. Somehow, he belonged in this crowd; and yet ... he also wasn’t like anyone else here.

When she looked at him, he met her gaze straight on, and his was interested. Interested enough that she looked away again.

The conversation went on, and Lena tried to pay attention, but she couldn’t keep from glancing at him throughout the evening. He was the first thing in weeks that distracted her from thoughts of Julia.

When the meeting finally drew to a close, she went looking for him, but she couldn’t find him anywhere, and she and Harvey left. On the way home she asked Harvey about him, but Harvey didn’t know his name. “I know he’s a veteran because he said something about it once. Everyone booed. Not me, of course.”

“Why did they boo?”

Harvey said, “Most of them escaped service because they were students or too young. But you know, they all think soldiers are blind followers of the government.”

“Oh.” Lena thought for a moment as they walked through the foggy streets back to the bungalow. “Does he come every Sunday?”

“He has been. Why are you so curious about him?”

“I don’t know. He seems interesting.”

“Ah, a budding romance?” Harvey teased.

She ignored the tease. “He sounds like a subversive, Harvey.”

“But he’s good looking.”

“This is how you get in trouble with the FBI.”

“They’re harmless, most of them, don’t you think? Poets, artists, blathering on about changing the world but smoking enough marijuana to make them too stupid to move. What will they ever do, Lena?”

She said nothing. Again, she thought of Rome and Julia and La Grotta and the questioning of the carabinieri. Harvey liked the scene and she understood why, though she agreed with Charlie. He should not go there, and she shouldn’t, either, not after what happened in Rome. It was a bad place for either of them to be, and she shouldn’t go back, and yet ...

Maybe once more. Just to learn his name. Just to see him again and satisfy her curiosity. Just one more time.

Two days later, Charlie nearly shoved the newspaper at Lena while she sat eating a cinnamon roll. “Lena, you’ve got to look at this. It’s perfect for you!”

She grabbed the newspaper before it landed in icing and scanned it. The classified advertisements. Salesgirl Wanted, Clerk Wanted, Secretary Wanted, Bookkeeper Wanted, Sketch Artist Wanted—

She stopped. At first she thought she was seeing things. But then, no, there it was. A job opening for a Sketch Artist at Lux Studios, $50 a week. Send résumé and sketches to Richard Flavio, POB 6148, Culver City .

Flavio.

She had no experience as a costume sketch artist, but she could do this, she knew. Julia had thought so too. It had been the original plan, hadn’t it? Cinecittà and then LA ... the scheduled interview at Cinecittà, had that been a lie? Lena shook away the thought and the sorrow it brought. The fact that this job was listed here, now ... well, it was meant to be, wasn’t it?

“Well?” Charlie asked.

“What?” Harvey came out of the bedroom. “What is it?”

“Sketch artist for Lux Studios,” Charlie told him. “For Flavio .”

“I don’t have enough on my résumé,” Lena said.

“So?” Charlie tapped her sketchbook on the table, and she knew he was right. Her résumé couldn’t get her the job, but her sketches could. She could. If she could show them in person, she knew she could convince Flavio that she was the perfect person for the job. “ You shine ,” Julia had said. Maybe it had been a lie. Maybe Julia had just said it to manipulate her, but maybe it was true. Maybe Lena could make Flavio see the same thing within her.

If she could just get to him.

“I have to go there,” she said. “In person. If I can show him what I can do, I can convince him. I’ve got those sketches I drew for my interview at Cinecittà.”

“Say no more,” Harvey said. “Let’s go.”

She changed, and they piled into the car.

The main building of Lux Studios looked like a southern plantation, long, pillared, with arched windows along its front. It was peach colored, with an art deco Lux Pictures in gold across the top of the roof, and a stylized woman holding a flame on either side of the words. A parking lot was off to one side, a building next to that, and other buildings stretched behind it. What Lena hadn’t counted on—what she hadn’t even thought about—was the guarded gate bisecting the road into the parking lot. She had no appointment. Why in God’s name should they let her in?

But that was Elsie talking, she told herself.

Charlie and Harvey both gave her a “What now?” look.

“I’ll get in. Somehow,” she told them. “Let me off here.”

She took a deep breath and imagined the building was a nightclub on the Via Veneto. She got out of the car, straightened, and walked up to the gate, and when the sunglassed and visored man leaned out to ask what she wanted, she said:

“Lena Taylor. I’m here to see Flavio.”

She met the guard’s gaze, though she had to imagine where that was through his sunglasses, and she lifted her chin, waiting with what she hoped was a suitably haughty impatience as he called the costume department to announce her.

But of course there was a pause. Of course no one there had ever heard of her.

The guard looked back at her. “Miss ... Taylor?”

“Lena Taylor,” she said. “Is there a problem?”

“I’m afraid you don’t have an appointment.”

“I certainly do,” she said irritably.

The guard frowned. “Oh, I—”

“It was quite an effort for me to get here on time from the airport. The least he can do is see me.”

The guard looked flummoxed. He got back on the phone. She heard him say, “But ... well, yes. She came from the airport. Um ... she’s insisting ... okay ... um, Miss Taylor?”

“Yes?”

“What is this regarding?”

“What do you think it’s regarding? Fashion, of course.”

“Oh, of course.” The guard said back into the phone—warily this time—“Fashion.”

Someone spoke for a long time on the other end. Lena tapped her foot. She looked impatiently at her watch. She took out her cigarettes, lit one, and smoked it with the bristly exhales and attitude of a woman who was rarely kept waiting and when she was, did not suffer it well.

“Listen,” she said, “if he hasn’t the time to see a woman who’s flown all this way to see him—”

“No, no,” the guard said. “You’re to go up, Miss Taylor. The costume department is that building over there, past the parking lot. They’re waiting for you.”

“Thank you.” Lena started toward the building, smoking now to calm her nerves, which were screaming at her bravado.

At the costume department she ground out her cigarette and took a moment to gather herself. Confidence.

She went inside. The secretary turned in her chair. “Miss Taylor.” The woman was clearly flummoxed. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t mark down an appointment, and—”

“I understand,” Lena said. “Things like that do happen.”

“Flavio is a bit late.”

“I can wait.” She sat herself down in one of the chairs against the wall. “Do you think he’ll be long?”

“He’s fitting Lana Turner.”

“I see.”

“She can be . . .”

Lena waved her hand to signal her understanding and opened her sketchbook as if she were so busy she had to make use of every moment.

She had waited an hour when she heard “Where is this confounded woman?” from down a hallway, followed by a quiet female voice saying, “She’s waiting,” and a bitten-off curse.

Lena looked up, and there he was. Flavio. She’d seen him in the movie magazines, of course. Tall, patrician looking, with dark hair swept back from his forehead, and his signature cravat. He looked the very picture of a costume designer—had she been called upon to describe one, she would have described him just this way. He stopped in front of her, his hands in his trouser pockets, and looked down his fine Roman nose at her, and said, “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve completely forgotten any meeting we had. When did we last speak? And you are?”

She stood and offered her hand. “I’m Lena Taylor.”

He took her hand and bowed slightly over it, though he looked confused. “You’re from where?”

It was time to be honest. Lena raised every bit of her self-confidence, smiled, and lifted her sketchbook. “I wanted to show you my sketches. I’m applying for the sketch artist job.”

She’d never seen anyone look more taken aback. Perplexed, a flash of anger, and then, just when she thought he was going to turn to his secretary and ask her to escort Lena to the door, Flavio laughed—a percussive burst so startling she stepped back.

He looked at his secretary. “Did you know this?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you believe this?” Another laugh. He looked at Lena. “Miss Taylor, do you have any idea what difficulty you have caused me today?”

“Well, I am sorry about that, but I hope you’ll find the trouble worth it.”

He lifted a fine brow. “Well then. As long as you’ve scrambled my afternoon ...” He motioned with his fine long fingers for the sketchbook she held. “Let’s see it.”

She gave it to him, and he gestured for her to follow him through the door that led into his office, which was a mess—a desk and chair, a love seat and low round table with other chairs around it, all covered with sketches and fabric swatches. An easel held a pad of paper and beside it was a small, tall table with pots of paint and a can of brushes, a box of pastels, and a bin of colored pencils. Its stool had been loaded with research books. A dye shade grid perched haphazardly on top.

He told her to have a seat, and then he shoved aside the sketchbooks on his desk chair to sit himself. She didn’t see any horizontal surface that wasn’t littered, so Lena carefully moved an estate auction catalog from the nearest chair and put it on the table. Flavio didn’t complain; he was too busy flipping the pages of her book. She sat nervously, not wanting to watch him, unable not to.

His face remained expressionless; she couldn’t tell what he thought about anything. He didn’t pause, but spent exactly the same amount of time on each page, which by her estimation was about two seconds. One after another after another. Her mouth was so dry she could not swallow, but she tried not to listen to the conversation in her head that poked at the edges of her brain: You’re not good enough. What made you think you could do this? You haven’t enough experience ... Elsie thoughts, not Lena thoughts.

Then, abruptly, he stopped. He closed the book and looked at her. Just a long, steady look that told her absolutely nothing. “All I need is a sketch artist,” he said finally. “You’d take the thumbnails I gave you and make them into full sketches, color them in, that sort of thing. Have you done that before?”

“At school.”

“How old are you?”

She was glad she’d decided to add those extra years to her age. “Twenty-six.”

“You’d be one of three others. You’ll be in the workroom too. Helping the seamstresses and the cutters. Can you do that?”

“I make my own clothes,” she told him. “My mom was a dressmaker. I helped her from the time I was old enough to hold pins without swallowing them.”

Flavio nodded. “All right then. I admire boldness, but not stupidity. So don’t be stupid, Lena Taylor, and you’re hired. Can you start tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly. “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret this.”

“Call me Flavio,” he said.

On Monday, Lena arrived at Lux Studios so early that Flavio’s secretary blinked owlishly at her and said, “He won’t be here for hours. And anyway, you won’t be up here .”

The girl took Lena downstairs to the workrooms, which thrummed with activity. She took in the tables with big rolls of fabrics, and men cutting it into pieces, pattern makers, and the sewing room, which hummed and pounded with the throttles of sewing machine pedals and the steady churn of needles and which had a rhythm all its own, so many machines it sounded like a kind of music.

Estelle was the matron in charge; she kept things on schedule, and in case you forgot, a huge chalkboard at the foot of the stairs showed what costumes were in production, and at what stage and who was assigned what. Flavio had three other sketch artists who took his croquis, or thumbnails, and enlarged them into full scale sketches and painted in the colors.

The sketching room was small, set with easels and shelves holding paints and pencils, pastels and everything needed for the work of fashion illustration, and immediately Lena felt at home.

All four of the easels looked to be in use, but one of them was surely hers, and so she took the one she liked best. She clamped paper in place, penciled out Flavio’s design—a gown in lustrous shades of blue, draped over the bodice and wrapped around the hips until it flowed like water into a full and trailing skirt. It was so lovely that she felt the thrill of it into her fingertips; to think that this was her job, to think that she was translating Flavio’s designs into something for others to look at ... for a moment she paused, feeling the weight of it, the naivete of her boldness in approaching him. She had so much to learn, and yet, he’d wanted her here. He’d thought her worthy of this job.

Another impossible thing.

She had started to paint when she felt someone else come into the room. Lena didn’t bother to look over her shoulder; she was too immersed in the job. But she felt someone come up behind her, she felt the scrutiny, and finally it was too distracting. She turned to see another young man—it was mostly young men in the workroom, with several women at the sewing machines. This one was tall and skinny, with round glasses and blondish hair.

“Hello,” she said politely.

“You’re the new one.” It wasn’t a question, and he did not look like he approved.

“Lena.” She held out her hand to him. “Lena Taylor.”

“You’re at my easel.”

She looked at the others, which all stood empty. “I didn’t know which one was mine.”

“They aren’t assigned. But I always work at this one.”

“Oh. Well. The paint’s wet. It would be hard for me to move it now.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage.”

Lena smiled politely. “There are three open ones.”

He let out a breath and said, “Look, you’re new, so maybe you don’t know, but I’m Flavio’s favorite, and you’re the only woman sketch artist here. That means you’re at the bottom of the ladder, and I hate to tell you this, but that’s probably where you’re going to stay.”

He was smug, and so confident. Lena looked at him and thought, It’s my first day. I don’t want to make an enemy. But then, like a sneaking little whisper, she heard Julia’s voice in her ear: “ It’s so easy to give in to what the world wants, isn’t it? You’ve been daring before. You can’t stop. Not ever. ”

Lena turned back to the sketch. “Thanks for the advice. The other easels are open.”

He was quiet and still for a long moment. Then he said, “You said your name was Lena? I’m Mike. Do you like jazz?”

She sent a postcard to her parents telling them that she was back in LA and working for a fashion designer (she didn’t mention the movies; her parents would only look down their noses at that, and she did not mention Walter, and hadn’t for months), but the truth was that she hardly saw Flavio at all; she stayed in the workrooms with the others, working on sketches, and then she took the bus back to Venice Beach, where she slept on the couch at Harvey and Charlie’s and saved money for her own apartment.

She loved her job. She loved everything about it. She loved the sketching and what she learned simply by looking at Flavio’s designs, and the work slowly soothed her grief and confusion over Julia. Most of the women in the costume workroom had husbands or boyfriends, and the men had wives or secrets they hushed up about whenever she walked by. But she had friends, including Mike, who was arrogant, yes, but could be funny, and was a wonderful source of gossip: the stars, the movie sets, what was going on at soundstage five, and who hated who or who was having an affair with whom, and then one day Lena heard one of the men talking about the jazz clubs down on Central Avenue, and that time when they saw Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner there and how wild it was.

She remembered the jazz clubs in Rome, and the longing hit her hard. A drink, the music, the bodies moving in the smoke ... it was what she wanted, a palpable reminder of a place and a time she knew she could never get back.

But when she asked these men which clubs on Central were the best, they shook their heads. “You’d get thrown out now,” one of them, Bob, said. “It’s not the same. They started cracking down on whites after the war. They don’t want mingling . No one goes there anymore.”

“Too many drugs,” said Mike. “You wouldn’t get two steps before the police would be escorting you back to your car.”

“Or someone’d be trying to sell you heroin,” Jerry piped up. “Go to the clubs on Western Avenue instead.”

She didn’t go. She was still feeling her way around, still in hiding, and now she had a job she loved too much to lose. She hadn’t stopped looking over her shoulder, and memories of Rome were still too close to revisit. She hadn’t managed to shrug off the fear, despite her new name. She kept her hair blond, long, and straight. She dressed differently, always in her own designs, even her casual clothing. Charlie and Harvey constantly commented on her transformation. No one in LA would mistake her for the Elsie Gruner she’d been. She was careful to stay away from anything that might bring her into the sights of the CIA—or whoever those men in Rome had been.

Except for one thing. One stupid thing.

Much to Charlie’s dismay, she went again with Harvey to Larry Lipton’s.

“Be watching for FBI agents checking license plates,” Charlie warned them as he cut roses in the front yard.

“I don’t think anyone there has a car. Maybe Larry,” Harvey said.

Charlie pleaded, “Lena . . .”

“Leave her alone. There’s a man there she likes.” Harvey grinned.

Lena said, “No there’s not.”

“I’m playing matchmaker. I expect to be best man at your wedding.”

Charlie gave her a chiding look. “Is he telling the truth? Is there a man there you’re interested in? Please don’t tell me he’s a communist. Don’t forget Rome.”

“I’m not going to forget,” Lena said darkly.

“And for God’s sake, don’t say anything about it. He might be an undercover agent himself.”

“My God, you’re suspicious. You didn’t used to be so suspicious,” Harvey said.

“That was before I spent a couple nights in jail. Be careful, both of you.”

Charlie’s warnings put a damper on the whole thing; again Lena told herself not to take the risk. Again, she found herself stepping up the porch stairs, going into Larry Lipton’s crowded living room. The man was there again. He acknowledged her with a nod when she came in with Harvey, and she gave him a smile. Someone passed around the marijuana, and she watched the man smoke along with the others.

Larry put on a jazz quartet she didn’t recognize, and then finally Bessie Smith, and that was when everyone settled and they talked about different planes of existence, and what plane creativity was on—as if it were a definitive one—and how the bomb impacted that creativity and existential crisis changed the trajectory of the subconscious.

There was only one reason she was here, and she told herself it wasn’t good enough. She’d stopped paying attention to the conversation. It meandered in and out; she could barely keep track of it, meaningless words, arguments—no, here Larry was careful to call it “heated discussion.”

She couldn’t sit still any longer. She should tell Harvey she was leaving and drag him along. When someone said, “I thought the working class was the hope of the world once, too, yes? But they said that while they were listening to Stalin, and so ...,” she couldn’t bring herself to listen. She was done with all of it; Italy had cured her of any interest. Lena wove her way through the bodies on the floor, most listening intently, several intent only on mind alteration, and went to the kitchen, where a woman Harvey had pointed out as Larry’s wife was opening another box of potato chips and lifting out one of the twin bags inside. She poured the chips into a bowl as she asked Lena, “You all right?”

Lena nodded. “I’m Lena. I just came in for more wine?”

“Right there.” Larry’s wife pointed to a jug of Almaden and went back into the living room with the chips.

She didn’t really want more wine. What she wanted was the meeting to be over so she could address the reason she’d come, and she was afraid that, like last time, he would disappear before she had a chance to talk to him, and the whole Sunday would be a waste. She reached for the bottle and was splashing more into her glass when she heard someone come into the kitchen. The dark-haired man. The sight of him made her hitch; she spilled wine over the edge of her glass and cursed beneath her breath and grabbed a nearby towel to wipe it up.

He stopped. Today he wore a simple short-sleeved blue shirt. Not expensive, but again, not shabby. A man who cared how he looked.

Nervously she said, “Did you want something? The beer’s in the cooler. Here’s wine.” She held out the bottle, then realized he had a bottle of beer in his hand.

“No,” he said. “Is that your boyfriend?”

“Excuse me?”

“The man you’re with?”

“Oh. Oh no, he’s just a friend. I mean, I live with him and his ... friend, but ... we’re just friends.”

He frowned a little. “I see.”

“Just down the street, actually. It’s only temporary. I’m going to move as soon as I save enough money.”

“Where do you work?”

“Lux Pictures. In the costume department. I’m a sketch artist. For Flavio. You know him?”

He nodded and took a sip of beer. “Can I get your autograph? It might be worth something when you’re famous.”

“Ha. I’ll never be as famous as Flavio. He’s far too good.”

“The future is uncertain.” His face clouded when he said it, but only for a moment. “You never know.”

“I never finished my schooling, you see, so it was a miracle that he chose me, especially because I had no experience,” she confessed, then wondered why she’d said it, and to this stranger, but she couldn’t stop babbling on.

“He must have seen a great deal of talent.”

“I think so,” she said seriously.

He laughed. “You need more confidence.”

“I’m working on that.” She knew that he’d been joking, but she was not. “What do you do?”

“I’m a screenwriter. Or ... I hope to be. I haven’t actually sold anything of substance yet.”

“What’s your name?”

“Paul Carbone.”

“What are you doing at Larry Lipton’s?”

He set his empty beer bottle on the counter. “Where are you from? There’s something in your voice I can’t place.”

“I asked first.”

“Questions are problematic these days, aren’t they?”

“You’re spending your Sundays talking about socialism and anarchy and all the wrongs of a capitalist society.”

He was silent.

“That seems odd for a veteran.”

He raised a thick dark brow. “You’ve been asking questions about me.”

“I thought you looked interesting.”

“I like to think of myself as open minded. But I don’t imagine the head of Lux would take well to finding out someone in his costume department spends her days with bohemians talking about ‘socialism and anarchy and all the wrongs of a capitalist society.’”

“Funny,” she said. “I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.”

“It’s a deal. So where are you from?”

“Ohio,” she said.

“Ah, Ohio. That’s the accent I heard.” He nodded, satisfied. “So you’re unattached?”

“I am.” She didn’t try to hide the smile that came with the words, or the simple joy she felt at saying them.

“Then I guess I’ll see you next Sunday, Lena?”

She hadn’t told him her name. “I see you’ve been asking questions about me too.”

His smile involved his whole face. “I thought you looked interesting.”

He walked past her to the back door, and she watched him go down the steps to a car parked there, an iridescent red Oldsmobile Dynamic—a flashy car that, like everything else about him, both matched and contradicted. When he drove away, she felt a loss, an impatience. He’d done that the last time, too, the quick retreat. She heard the murmurs from the other room: the meeting was breaking up.

But this time she’d learned his name, and he’d said he would see her next Sunday, and now she wanted the week to speed by.

It wasn’t until that night, tucked in on the red chenille couch, that she wondered why she’d told him she was unattached, when she most certainly was not. There was Walter. She was still married. Or at least, Elsie Gruner was. What that meant for Lena Taylor, Lena didn’t know. But married was married, wasn’t it?