Free The Decent Proposal by Kemper Donovan Page A

don’t know anyone who grew up in L.A.”
    â€œThat’s because you’re in entertainment.” It amazed Elizabeth that this idea—of no one being from L.A.—persisted in the zeitgeist. Everyone loved to talk about how “fake” L.A. was; they called it a “dream factory,” a place where people came to pretend to be someone else, to escape their pasts and start over, but to the extent that that was even true, it pertained to the entertainment industry only. For most people who lived here, L.A. was their past, and their future too. It was their home. There were literally millions of people who’d grown up in Los Angeles, whose families had lived here for generations. Many of them had nothing to do with film, television, or music. But they were as much a part of the city as the flashy transplants who sucked up all the attention. In fact, entertainment made up only a sliver of the city’s wealth—a sliver that was shrinking daily due to tax breaks in other states (New Mexico, Michigan, Georgia, New York) for locally sourced film and television productions. Did he know anything about this? Did he ever read a newspaper? Even just online?
    â€œFair enough,” he said. “So where’d you grow up exactly?”
    â€œSouth Central.” Elizabeth watched these two little words go off like a hand grenade. (The man ahead of them glanced backward, as if she’d said something lewd or controversial.) Usually she was vague about where she grew up or, if pressed, became overly specific and said either Westmont (her immediate neighborhood) or South Los Angeles, which was what the area had been renamed in an attempt to wash away the stink of recent history. Upon learning she grew up in South Central, most people were tempted to make a success story out of her, a modern spin on the old Horatio Alger “rags to riches” trope, a pull-herself-up-by-her-bootstraps, Hallmark Hall of Fame narrative that began in the slums of L.A. and ended in the sparkling offices of Slate Drubble & Greer, Elizabeth stationed in her very own office with her very own assistant, business suit stretched modestly over her full Mexican figure: cue triumphant music.
    Her story was nowhere near as tidy, but she had no interest in untangling it for strangers, or even for acquaintances. Fortunately most people didn’t really care what her story was, and a cursory answer almost always served the purpose. But what else were they going to talk about for 104 hours? (She stole a glance at her watch: 8:06. Make that 103.9 hours.) At the very least, they could talk about the riots a little. She knew from experience it took about three seconds for the riots to come up after referencing South Central. It was like a word association.
    â€œOh, wow,” he said. “So how old were you? During the . . .”
    â€œRiots?”
    He nodded.
    â€œTwelve.”
    She’d been in the sixth grade, immersed in a book report on The Diary of Anne Frank . It was embarrassing to remember, but she’d changed topics by the middle of the second day (school had been canceled), opting for a personal essay that likened hersituation to Anne’s, holed up in her apartment like Anne in her annex. Except for not getting taken away in the end and murdered by the Nazis , she thought to herself now. Her English teacher had submitted the essay for a city-wide contest calling for responses to the riots, and she’d actually won. There had been a local news segment, a reading at the Rotary club, a signed letter from the mayor. It had all been pretty exciting.
    â€œThat must’ve been intense,” he said.
    â€œIt was,” she said solemnly.
    â€œSo do your parents still live out there?”
    Elizabeth’s shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. She nodded stiffly. She didn’t want to talk about her parents. But it was her own fault. She’d opened the door.
    â€œWhat do they