Chapter Text
Myka Bering steps off the train in Los Angeles at ten o’clock in the morning on January 15, 1934. She is twenty-three years old. She is Miss Mountain-Fresh Complexion Colorado Springs, 1933, and she knows that at last her life has begun to change. She has signed a two-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She is going to be in the movies.
A room in a Culver City boarding house awaits her and her travel case, which is full of clothing that she now realizes is far better suited to arid Colorado chill than to California’s sun and warmth. She reasons that that is all right; how much time will she be spending in her old skin anyway? The studio will remake her; the studio will clothe the new version of Myka Bering.
Years later, she will see the memo regarding one “Mika Bearing, Colorado beauty contest winner”: “Decent face, far too tall. Not ingénue material. Back line of chorus. Possible comedy support at most.” But handwritten, below: “think she has something; worth signing.”
Her first day at the studio is a blur. She sees so many girls, boys, young people just like her, yet they all know where they are going, what they are doing: “Wardrobe!” “Makeup!” “Publicity!” “Casting!” Myka is sent from one department to another, with each part of her—hair, face, body—examined critically, clinically.
In the afternoon, she is given leave to find something to eat. She wanders among the buildings of Lot 1, hoping the commissary will magically present itself. There are people everywhere: workers in overalls, creative types with loosened ties and rolled-up sleeves, polished executives, chic ladies. She could simply ask someone to point her in the right direction. She could… but what if she picks the wrong person? What if she bothers someone important?
She has spotted no real stars yet; she imagines that they hold themselves above these lowly beings who merely facilitate their shining over Hollywood, over everyone. So she is taken aback when she rounds a corner and sees—leaning against a concrete wall, smoking a cigarette, looking for all the world like a normal, albeit strikingly beautiful, person—THE Helena Wells. She is wearing trousers, Myka registers. She is wearing trousers, she is smoking a cigarette, and she is squinting into the afternoon sun. She looks down and away, drops her cigarette, grinds it under a high heel. Under heel, as a man would. She looks up again, this time straight at Myka. She raises an eyebrow. She smiles, just a little. Then she turns and strides away.
Myka does not yet understand, in this moment, that this is the point at which her life truly began to change.
TBC