Glamorous Notions

by Megan Chance

She was twenty, and the way she’d managed to get out of her parents’ pig farm in Zanesville was by hitching her wagon to Walter Maynard. She thought she’d be in that town forever, helping her mother run her dressmaking business and trying in vain to convince anyone to order one of her own modern designs and stinking of her father’s pigs,

“You hitched your wagon to a loser, girlie.”

But I’m not going to call you Elsie. That’s the name of that Borden cow, and you’re no cow. Besides, you’re going to be famous one day, and Elsie just won’t do, will it?”

“The name! The way it came . . . it’s like a sign. It fits you. Lena.”

“Julia, until I came to LA, the most exciting thing that ever happened to me was the county fair. I feel like I’ve spent years waiting for something interesting to happen.”

the way Julia had distracted Lena with friendship and praise . . . Had it been deliberate? Had it all been a lie? “You’re a good partner.” Just like Walter. Julia had taught her how to play a game. Julia had used her.

It was odd, wasn’t it, how once you got everything you thought you wanted, fate—or whatever—threw a wrench into it, so that you were left reevaluating your life once again?

Julia had used her in Rome, was she doing it again? What she said about saving Lena’s life—had that really been the way it was? So much of it was hazy with the passage of time. What remained was Lena’s fear of those men, and the words “You’re part of it. You can’t escape.”

“What do I like to say about actresses?” “The only time you want to see them is in a movie, a gala, or your bed.”

“Being a woman means you have a perspective no man has. It makes you powerful, Lena. It makes you ‘more than,’ not ‘less than.’”

Hollywood was too competitive for courtesy, and what courtesy existed was all fake anyway. You couldn’t trust it and the only favors in this town were quid pro quo.

I’m not the only CIA man working for the pictures, for one thing. The Psychological Warfare Workshop has many arms, and monitoring communists in Hollywood is only part of it.

“In the Soviet Union, jazz is officially banned. It’s easier to find Russian cigarettes in LA than a saxophone anywhere in the Soviet Union.”