Picture Perfect

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.