Chapter 2 #2
“I’ll ask the manager at the restaurant if he can give you work until you find a job,” Mickie said soothingly. “And see if you can get a cheap seat to L.A. online. You can always find a deal. I’ll call you later.”
Billie didn’t know what to do, so she took Mickie’s advice and checked on the internet.
She found a ticket on a red-eye that made two stops crossing the country and was surprisingly cheap.
She had enough money to pay for it, but it would leave her very little once she got to California.
She would have to take the waitressing job or whatever else she could get while she combed the employment agencies for a real job.
She hated to give up on Boston, but she couldn’t afford to hold out much longer, and with Mickie, she’d have a roof over her head.
In Boston very shortly she wouldn’t even have that.
Feeling very anxious, she bought the ticket online, and notified the hotel that she was leaving that night.
Her three-week job hunt had been futile.
She never would have thought that she’d be going to Los Angeles to live with her sister.
But there was no one for her to lie to now, or to blame Billie for things she hadn’t done.
They were two grown women who would be living with each other.
She just hoped that her sister was mature enough now to handle it like an adult, and not the little monster she’d been when they were growing up.
She assumed that life on her own for the past year and a half, and with roommates, would have taught her something.
It never dawned on Billie that Mickie might have lost her roommates for other reasons.
She believed her. Mickie was always so convincing.
In a single phone call, in a matter of minutes, she had convinced Billie to leave Boston, and move to L.A. to live with her.
Mickie called her back from work at the restaurant, right before Billie left the hotel, and told her that her manager had promised to give Billie night shifts at the restaurant for a couple of weeks, since some of the waitresses were taking vacation, and he could use the help.
And if he liked her style, he might offer her a regular job, which Mickie said she could use to supplement her income, even if she found a day job.
Billie hoped she wouldn’t need to do that, if she found a job she was qualified for with her degree from MIT.
Mickie was a high school dropout, and she was in better financial shape than Billie.
It would have proved their father right if he’d known.
Fortunately, he didn’t. Neither of them ever talked to him, and he didn’t call them.
Billie hoped her dire situation was only temporary.
It was terrifying, no longer having the scholarship to depend on, no other source of income, and watching her meager savings dwindle day by day.
She felt incredibly stupid not having dealt with it by lining up a job long before graduation.
Mickie gave her the address of the apartment when she called, and Billie thanked her for getting her the job at the restaurant.
She told her when she was arriving. Her flight was leaving Boston at midnight, and zigzagging across the country, with a stop in Chicago, and another in Phoenix.
She was due to land in L.A. at eleven A.M. local time after two long layovers.
She’d be traveling for fourteen hours to get there, but the ticket was dirt cheap.
When she got to the airport, she checked her two boxes of books.
She didn’t have time to ship them to Iowa that day, and they were her favorites, textbooks she wanted to be able to refer to if she got a job in a research lab, to refresh her memory if she needed to.
She checked her suitcase with them, and hoped it would all arrive in L.A.
without getting lost on the way. She was wearing jeans and an MIT sweatshirt, and running shoes with holes in them.
She had her hair in braids and wasn’t wearing any makeup, and looked like a kid going to camp.
The woman at the airline counter took a good look at her to make sure she was old enough to be traveling alone.
The economy seats were so close together on the flight, she couldn’t put her seat back at all.
No food was served and she was too nervous to eat anyway.
She hoped that everything would work out, and that moving in with Mickie wouldn’t be a mistake.
She never would have guessed that she’d do something like this, but she had no other options at the moment.
She was going to do everything she could to get a lab job in L.A.
, even as the lowest assistant. She hadn’t spent four years at MIT in order to be a waitress and forget everything she’d learned and been trained for.
She was off to a bumpy start after her moment of glory on graduation day.
Magna cum laude hadn’t done her any good so far, and she hoped she’d get lucky in L.A.
She had a five-hour layover at O’Hare in Chicago, took her backpack with her and had a cup of coffee in the airport and walked around, and then dozed in a seat in the airport for a few hours.
She got back on the plane when her six A.M. flight for Phoenix was called.
She fell asleep again as soon as the flight took off, and bought a breakfast wrap on the plane before they landed in Phoenix.
She wandered around the airport again, and couldn’t wait to get to L.A.
She felt wrinkled and grungy. She splashed cold water on her face in the bathroom and re-braided her hair.
A boy who looked about fifteen tried to pick her up while she waited for her flight for the last leg of the trip, his mother gave her disapproving looks, and she realized what a mess she must look like.
He asked her what MIT was, and she said it was a university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Cool shirt. Is it vintage?” She had washed it a million times in the last four years.
“No, it’s just old.” She wanted to tell him that she had just graduated from there three weeks ago, magna cum laude, so they’d know she was respectable, but she didn’t.
She finally got back on the plane for the final flight of the journey.
She could have flown to Tahiti or halfway around the globe in the time it had taken her to fly from Boston to Los Angeles.
They landed on time and Billie collected her boxes and bag, grateful they had arrived with her, and took a bus into the city.
From there she took an Uber to Mickie’s address in West Hollywood.
It had been the longest trip of her life.
She felt filthy by then, and she couldn’t wait to peel off her clothes and take a shower.
It was hot in L.A. When the Uber dropped her off, she stood looking at a slightly shabby building with a small pool next to it.
Mickie had left the keys with the building manager, who handed them to Billie.
Mickie had said she had a go-see for a modeling job that day, and said she’d be home around four.
Billie carried the boxes and suitcase up the stairs to the third-floor apartment, let herself in, and almost cried with relief.
There was a small, sparsely furnished living room.
The furniture was threadbare and the couch was stained.
There were no curtains on the windows or pictures on the wall, and an ugly light fixture hung from the ceiling, but it looked like a palace to Billie, and for now it was home.
There were three small bedrooms, one with shoes all over the floor and a bed piled high with discarded outfits Mickie had tried on for the go-see, and the other two bedrooms, which each had a bed, a chair, and a dresser.
Billie dumped her belongings in one of them.
She had never been so happy to be anywhere in her life.
She pulled off the MIT sweatshirt and her jeans, kicked off her shoes, and lay on the bed in her underwear.
There was no air-conditioning but she didn’t care.
The heat felt good, and after she lay there for a while, she went and took a shower and washed her hair, wrapped herself in a clean towel from a stack in the only bathroom, and walked around the small apartment.
There was a tiny basic kitchen, and a small balcony.
She stood on it and looked down at the pool.
She felt like she was in a whole different world from the one she had left.
The most illustrious universities in the country were in Cambridge, on beautiful campuses where the elite had been educated for centuries.
In L.A., everything looked either new or shabby, in a funny patchwork of Spanish-style houses and modern facades with swimming pools of different shapes and sizes in every backyard.
It looked like a movie set, and Billie felt like she was in one as she took her laptop out of her backpack and turned it on, and looked up the employment agencies she needed to contact as soon as possible.
A number of them specialized in medical jobs.
She jotted down the names and phone numbers, and had time to call two before Mickie got home.
By the time she did, Billie had two appointments for the next day.
She didn’t waste any time. Her situation was dire.