She said goodbye to them before she went to bed on Sunday night, and left the apartment early Monday morning. She took a cab to the airport with her two suitcases filled with summer clothes, most of them suitable for work. She had a reservation at a small hotel near the studio they had recommended to her, and she had given herself a week to find a small furnished apartment, or a room somewhere. She felt very grown up flying across the country for a job, and searching for an apartment on her own. She’d never done anything like it before. She knew no one in L.A., except her mother if she could find her. It would be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. She was going to call actors’ agencies, and search through directories by name. Anything was possible. The only thing she knew was that her mother would be forty-four years old now. She was going to search under her maiden name of Basquet and her married name. She suspected that she didn’t use her father’s anymore, since she’d left him twelve years before, and it couldn’t be a fond memory for her either.
* * *
—
The flight to L.A. was uneventful, and she arrived at the hotel at noon local time. The hotel was small and battered looking. The room was barely bigger than the bed, but it was cheap, in a safe neighborhood, and there was a pool.
She had lunch at a coffee shop nearby once she dropped off her suitcases, scoured the real estate section of the newspaper while she ate, and circled four or five apartment listings. She called for the apartments from her hotel room, and two of them had already been rented. After lunch, she picked up her rental car. She had to take out extra insurance because of her age, but they were willing to rent to her. Her father had given her a credit card for major expenses. She rented a small, unimpressive Ford, but it would get her where she needed to go. They gave her a map of the city and neighboring counties, and she set out to see the two apartments. Both were in seedy-looking buildings, and the apartments were awful. She went back to the hotel, and took a swim in the pool. There were no hotel guests visible. She assumed they were all at work, or out for the day. She called two realtors and they had nothing for her either. She wasn’t worried. She knew she would find something sooner or later. And on Friday, she did.
It was a small residential building in West Hollywood that rented out furnished studio apartments by the month for reasonable rents. It was small and modern and clean, tucked in between Spanish-style buildings. It was within her budget, and she rented a room on the second floor, with a view of the neighbor’s garden and a large palm tree just beyond it. It wasn’t fancy or even pretty, but it had everything she needed, and it was more than adequate for two and a half months.
“Welcome home,” she said to herself, as she dropped her suitcases in the apartment and went to look at the kitchen. It had a small fridge, a double hot plate, and a toaster oven, which was all she needed. There was a diner nearby and a Mexican restaurant up the street, where she suspected she’d be eating most of her meals. The apartment came with linens, and there was a Laundromat down the street where she could do her laundry.
She hung her clothes in the closet. A noisy old air conditioner kept the one room cool, and she was sorry the building didn’t have a pool, but that would have been a luxury she couldn’t afford.
She knew Jake was back in San Francisco by then, and she wondered if he had found a job yet. He wasn’t looking for anything related to acting. He just wanted something that would pay him enough to make pocket money for school in the fall. He was willing to do almost anything.
She spent the weekend exploring L.A. by car, and checked out the studio location so she’d know where to go on Monday, and wouldn’t be late. The studio had a huge parking lot for employees where she could leave her car.
She finally reached Jake on Sunday and told him all about it. He said he’d found a job as a busboy at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. It sounded like a cushy job to her, and he was going to spend three weeks in August at his parents’ house in Lake Tahoe before he went back to school.
“Maybe I’ll come to see you in L.A. before I go up to Tahoe,” he said before they hung up. She loved the idea, and wondered if he’d get around to it, between his job and family and their summer plans. She promised to tell him all about her internship as soon as she started.
She reported to work promptly at nine the next morning, after parking in the employee lot. She went to the main studio office, and asked for the person whose name she’d been given. She was a serious-looking woman wearing a shocking pink silk blouse and white slacks, with her hair in a neat French twist. Antonia had worn a black cotton dress and flat shoes in case she had a lot of running around to do. She looked businesslike and efficient, and very young, with her hair in a ponytail and very little makeup. She didn’t want to stand out. Her first assignment was to deliver a manila envelope to the third assistant director on the set of the movie they were making. The woman she had reported to drew a quick map. The studio lots looked like a maze to her, as she started out to find the set where she had to go. It took her fifteen minutes to find it, and the day was already blazing hot. When she reached the right place, a security guard stopped her. She told him her mission and who the envelope was from and he let her through, and told her to be very quiet when she entered the set. The cameras were due to start rolling any minute.