Hollywood Beginnings (A Novella) Read Online Free Page A

closed the door again, always the mom-in-charge, only dispensing advice and not revealing more than that. It wouldn't do any good to push her. I shook my head. "It's hard to explain to your daughter, you mean."
    She considered that for a minute as we moved down the starry walk. "I have a regret just like you do, Amy. I've just lived with it longer. Your marrying Duane is a new mistake."
    My head snapped like I'd been hit, but she was a star ahead and didn't notice. I wanted to defend myself, even though marrying Duane was something I regretted like hell.
    She sighed. "At my age, it's more like a kind of nostalgia , an understanding that what's gone is truly a long way behind and fading further all the time."
    She stopped, looked down, and then her head came up, and she searched the street. "Oh, there's a dress shop. You need a new outfit."
    I looked at the stores ahead, their awnings chichi enough they'd be called boutiques , and the mother I knew did not pay boutique prices.
    She waved me along. "You go on in. I'll be right there. My treat."
    Had she temporarily lost her Minnesota frugality? I should have said no , but I make a measly amount of money designing flaming basketballs for Joe's House of Balls and smiling hamburgers for the Beef Barn menu. And I did have a dinner ahead where only two things could persuade one Brian Keller to be very, very sorry.
    Well, as my grandmother used to say, women in our family do not raise dummies . I shot off to the nearest store, and only at the door did I glance back to see she'd stopped at Baron's star.
     
    ***
     
    The boutique was beautiful, and I fell in love with a dress I'd never wear once I left L.A. I'd even gotten shoes, a semi-bondage pair of sandals I could walk in but not far. Back in the hotel, I hung the dress on the bathroom door and admired it before, during, and after my shower.
    I owned a basic black dress or two, of course, but they were the kind that a cotton cardigan would dress up . This one was a sleek hour glass, and it didn't even have me in it yet. The lingerie straps and sweetheart-shaped lace bodice could have looked like a bra, except the whole dress was so beautifully done, it rose to slutty elegance. And it didn't even need a bra because a solid push-up number was built right in. Even I had to admit it put the girls to their best advantage, and I wasn't a gender that normally noticed that kind of thing.
    Mercifully, my mom had headed off to an evening church service and for the first time in my life she hadn't suggested I go with her. I didn't even make up an excuse for staying behind that was worthy of my teenage reputation. It had been a while since I'd needed to run some smoke and mirrors by the parents, but I should still be able to. Instead I told her I was going out to get some dinner, and she left for the service.
    I think she wanted some time alone, and I could see she'd turned inward already. It looked the same to me, the face of someone really praying or meditating or fly fishing or even focused on a hot cup of tea when it's cold out. I'd never understood, even as a minister's daughter, why people didn't see that a prayer wasn't a thing so much as it was a way of doing things. I like to think it's how I look when I paint, not when I'm making the art I'm paid to do but creating what comes from within.
    My mom looked like that when she left, and she hadn't even been curious why I needed a dress. As far as she knew I hadn't been on a date since the divorce. And I wasn't telling, or counting, the coffees with a couple of sad divorced men and one older guy who'd been a set-up by a friend. That was the last, worst date. The man couldn't have been less interested in me. He only wanted to talk about his cholesterol levels, how much he missed his ex-wife's potato salad, and the joys of Classic Meadows, which was, according to him, the best public golf course in Brainerd, MN. I kept saying, I did not know that , and then I said I am never dating