She blows into Los Angeles on a Santa Ana wind, which gives Jane a migraine and keeps Bing at the hospital for hours after his shift ends. The dust unsettles the city; the summer heat laces the blood and years later she will praise it for seeping into her mentality, tossing her from job to job until her restless nature returns her to a classroom.
It is Will who suggests teaching when she owns up to not liking television. She adores Los Angeles for the stories that lie waiting underneath its glossy surface. Here is the barista who left home with stars in her eyes; there is the nanny who longs for home in the Midwest but has a script in her pocket and a belief in waiting out fate.
These are not the kind of stories Lydia deals with on camera. She has never quite felt the same in front of a lens since the incident and wouldn't have taken the job had she not wanted to leave home so badly. A job meant independence, responsibility, maturity. A means to channel her...energy. For the same reasons she is ill at ease in her big sister's spare room. Bing and Jane are anxious to look after her so soon after what has become known as the "incident", but she resists, finds an apartment that isn't too shabby and learns to balance a chequebook.
Her pay check from the production company relies partly on her sieving through the debris of the lives of those who are foolish and narcissistic. It is not her job to interview Oscar winners. Instead she serves vengeance to the jilted ex girlfriend whom her bosses will label as trailer park trash. The day a tape of an all too familiar variety leaks, this one pertaining to a model the media gleefully abhors as "low rent", she quits. It is infuriating how a blue eyed phantom can dictate her life. She runs to avoid his ruining her. She resigns to avoid the thought of his face, his lips, ghosting through her memory. Lydia Bennet has wasted enough time on him.
She surprises Lizzie for a weekend visit and waits for her brother in law (in waiting) to deduce the problem.
"How's the job?"
"It's a little...well, you guys watch me right?" It is meant as a joke; she gapes at his nod.
"Here and there. We try but your sister gets a little annoyed at how they...how they treat you. On the camera."
"You mean how they objectify me to keep the attention of male viewers?" She beats him to the chin tuck, giggling at his raised eyebrows. If nothing else, she is glad the debacle brought her a brother or two.
"Something like that. Lydia, I hope you know that you have more to offer the world than just a pretty face." He chucks her under the chin and suggests teaching. This then is how her future is decided.