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Judith nodded, a smile lifting the corners of her mouth. “Ah, yes. I lived in Californiathen.”
“Really?” Nina took a bite of her sandwich, her understanding of Judith’s slight figure growing when she realized it was nothing more than creamy butter, watercress, andcucumber.
“I’d moved there from Iowa.” Judith laughed. “Isn’t itabsurd?”
“You seem too sophisticated to be from Iowa in the 50s,” Nina said. “No offense to Iowa in the50s.”
Judith nodded. “No, you’re quite right. It was ghastly. Small and brown except in summer when everything turned green. Even then it felt desolate to me. A place where one waited todie.”
“You wanted something else,” Ninasaid.
“Yes, although I didn’t know what. And in the 1950s when you wanted something else but didn’t know what that something was, you either went to New York orCalifornia.”
“What made you choose California?” Ninaasked.
“Oh my dear, even then New York was for intellectuals. I didn’t want to think. I wanted tofeel.”
“And did you?” Nina asked. She’d finished her first sandwich and was forcing herself to wait before inhaling thesecond.
Judith’s expression opened with a grin that removed twenty years from her face. “DidI!”
“What did you dothere?”
“Why, everything! I lingered in Hollywood, catching glimpses of starlets and hoping I might be discoveredtoo.”
“And you were,” Ninasaid.
Judith nodded slowly. “Not the way I expected, but yes. And I had such fun in the meantime. That’s something people don’tunderstand.”
“What’s that?” Nina asked the question before allowing herself to start on the nextsandwich.
“I hear young people say it all the time — everything happens for a reason, things always work out in the end — but I don’t think they know how true it is.” Her face took on a dreamy expression. “I don’t think they understand that each thing, even the mistakes and accidents, make up the course of our life. When we look back on it all, everything makes sense, we see it all unfolded exactly as it was meant to, exactly as we wanted it toeven.”
“Is that how you feel?” Nina asked. “That everything unfolded like it was meantto?”
“Of course! California was full of beautiful men at the time. I went with more than my share of them. We dressed for lunch and changed for dinner. We had our pictures taken for the newspapers. We stayed up late drinking champagne and feeling like we were the only people in theworld.”
“And then you became famous,” Ninasaid.
“Not right away of course, and not the way I’d expected, but yes. You might saythat.”
“How did ithappen?”
“A gentleman approached me at a party and said he was making a calendar for soldiers still overseas. At the time the pictures he wanted to use were scandalous, like appearing in a pornographic magazine now.” Nina laughed as Judith continued. “But I was in California. I’d already left the person I thought I was behind. I did the calendar because I wantedto.”
What do you want to doNina?
“Did you suffer any consequence?” Ninaasked.
“Not immediately,” Judith said, pouring herself more tea. “No one in California cared. The calendar was a tremendous success. It led to more work, more money, more recognition. The fact that it was considered in poor taste by some didn’t affect me at all until I metSamuel.”
“What did your family in Iowathink?”
Judith waved away the question. “They had no idea what I was doing. We were in two different worlds bythen.”
“But not Samuel? Surely he knew about your work,” Ninasaid.
“Oh yes, he knew.” Judith’s eyes sparkled. “One might even say it was one of the things that most intrigued him aboutme.”
