Chap­ter 27

“I’m going out on a date with Mick Riva.”
“Like hell you are.”
When Celia was angry, her chest and her cheeks flushed. This time, they’d grown red faster than I’d ever seen.
We were in the out­door kitchen of her week­end home in Palm Springs. She was grilling us burg­ers for din­ner.
Ever since the arti­cle came out, I’d refused to be seen with her in Los Ange­les. The rags didn’t yet know about her place in Palm Springs. So we would spend week­ends there togeth­er and our weeks in L.A. apart.
Celia went along with the plan like a put-upon spouse, agree­ing to what­ev­er I want­ed because it was eas­i­er than fight­ing with me. But now, with the sug­ges­tion of going on a date, I’d gone too far.
I knew I’d gone too far. That was the point, sort of.
“You need to lis­ten to me,” I said.
“You need to lis­ten to me.” She slammed the lid of the grill shut and ges­tured to me with a pair of sil­ver tongs. “I’ll go along with any of your lit­tle tricks that you want. But I’m not get­ting on board with either of us dat­ing.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“We have plen­ty of choic­es.”
“Not if you want to keep your job. Not if you want to keep this house. Not if you want to keep any of our friends. Not to men­tion that the police could come after us.”
“You are being para­noid.”
“I’m not, Celia. And that’s what’s scary. But I’m telling you, they know.”
“One arti­cle in one tiny paper thinks they know. That’s not the same thing.”
“You’re right. This is still ear­ly enough that we can stop it.”
“Or it will go away on its own.”
“Celia, you have two movies com­ing out next year, and my movie is all any­one is talk­ing about around town.”
“Exact­ly. Like Har­ry always says, that means we can do what­ev­er we want.”
“No, that means we have a lot to lose.”
Celia, angry, picked up my pack of cig­a­rettes and lit one. “So that’s what you want to do? You want to spend every sec­ond of our lives try­ing to hide what we real­ly do? Who we real­ly are?”
“It’s what every­one in town is doing every day.”
“Well, I don’t want to.”
“Well, then you shouldn’t have become famous.”
Celia stared at me as she puffed away at her cig­a­rette. The pink of her lip­stick stained the fil­ter. “You’re a pes­simist, Eve­lyn. To your very core.”
“What would you like to do, Celia? Maybe I should call over to Sub Rosa myself? Call the FBI direct­ly? I can give them a quote. ‘Yep, Celia St. James and I are deviants!’ ”
“We aren’t deviants.”
“I know that, Celia. And you know that. But no one else knows that.”
“But maybe they would. If they tried.”
“They aren’t going to try. Do you get that? No one wants to under­stand peo­ple like us.”
“But they should.”
“There are lots of things we all should do, sweet­heart. But it doesn’t work that way.”
“I hate this con­ver­sa­tion. You’re mak­ing me feel awful.”
“I know, and I’m sor­ry. But the fact that it’s awful doesn’t mean it’s not true. If you want to keep your job, you can­not allow peo­ple to believe that you and I are more than friends.”
“And if I don’t want to keep my job?”
“You do want to.”
“No, you want to. And you’re pin­ning it on me.”
“Of course I want to.”
“I’d give it all up, you know. All of it. The mon­ey and the jobs and the fame. I’d give it all up just to be with you, just to be nor­mal with you.”
“You have no idea what you’re say­ing, Celia. I’m sor­ry, but you don’t.”
“What’s real­ly going on here is that you’re not will­ing to give it up for me.”
“No, what’s going on here is that you’re a dilet­tante who thinks if this act­ing thing doesn’t work out, you can go back to Savan­nah and live off your par­ents.”
“Who are you to talk to me about mon­ey? You’ve got bags of it.”
“Yeah, I do. Because I worked my ass off and was mar­ried to an ass­hole who knocked me around. And I did that so I could be famous. So I could live the life we’re liv­ing. And if you think I’m not going to pro­tect that, you’ve lost your mind.”
“At least you’re admit­ting this is about you.”
I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Celia, lis­ten to me. Do you love that Oscar? The very thing you keep on your night­stand and touch before you go to sleep?”
“Don’t—”
“Peo­ple are say­ing, giv­en how ear­ly you won it, you’re the kind of actress who could win mul­ti­ple times. I want that for you. Don’t you want that?”
“Of course I do.”
“And you’re gonna let them take that away just because you met me?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Lis­ten to me, Celia. I love you. And I can’t let you throw away every­thing you have built—and all your incred­i­ble talent—by tak­ing a stand when no one will stand with us.”
“But if we don’t try …”
“No one is going to back us, Celia. I know how it feels to be shut out of this town. I’m just final­ly mak­ing my way back in. I know you’re prob­a­bly pic­tur­ing some world where we go up against Goliath and win. But that’s not gonna hap­pen. We’d tell the truth about our lives, and they’d bury us. We could end up in prison or in a men­tal hos­pi­tal. Do you get that? We could be com­mit­ted. It’s not that far-fetched. It hap­pens. Cer­tain­ly, you can count on the fact that no one would return our calls. Not even Har­ry.”
“Of course Har­ry would. Harry’s … one of us.”
“Which is pre­cise­ly why he could nev­er be caught talk­ing to us again. Don’t you get it? The dan­ger is even high­er for him. There are actu­al­ly men out there who would want to kill him if they knew. That’s the world we live in. Any­one who touched us would be exam­ined. Har­ry wouldn’t be able to with­stand it. I could nev­er put him in that posi­tion. To lose every­thing he’s worked for? To quite lit­er­al­ly risk his life? No. No, we’d be alone. Two pari­ahs.”
“But we’d have each oth­er. And that’s enough for me.”
She was cry­ing now, the tears streak­ing down her face and car­ry­ing her mas­cara with them. I put my arms around her and wiped her cheek with my thumb. “I love you so much, sweet­heart. So, so much. And it’s in part because of things like that. You’re an ide­al­ist and a roman­tic, and you have a beau­ti­ful soul. And I wish the world was ready to be the way you see it. I wish that the rest of the peo­ple on earth with us were capa­ble of liv­ing up to your expec­ta­tions. But they aren’t. The world is ugly, and no one wants to give any­one the ben­e­fit of the doubt about any­thing. When we lose our work and our rep­u­ta­tions, when we lose our friends and, even­tu­al­ly, what mon­ey we have, we will be des­ti­tute. I’ve lived that life before. And I can­not let it hap­pen to you. I will do what­ev­er I can to pre­vent you from liv­ing that way. Do you hear me? I love you too much to let you live only for me.”
She heaved into my body, her tears grow­ing inside her. For a moment, I thought she might flood the back­yard.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I whis­pered into her ear. “I love you more than any­thing else in the entire world.”
“It’s not wrong,” Celia said. “It shouldn’t be wrong, to love you. How can it be wrong?”
“It’s not wrong, sweet­heart. It’s not,” I said. “They’re wrong.”
She nod­ded into my shoul­der and held me tighter. I rubbed her back. I smelled her hair.
“It’s just that there’s not much we can do about it,” I said.
When she calmed down, she pulled away from me and opened the grill again. She did not look at me as she flipped the burg­ers. “So what is your plan?” she said.
“I’m going to get Mick Riva to elope with me.”
Her eyes, which already looked sore from cry­ing, start­ed to bloom again. She wiped a tear away, keep­ing her eyes on the grill. “What does that mean for us?” she said.
I stood behind her and put my arms around her. “It doesn’t mean what you think it means. I’m going to see if I can get him to elope with me, and then I’m going to have it annulled.”
“And you think that means they’ll stop watch­ing you?”
“No, I know it means they will only watch me more. But they will be look­ing for oth­er things. They will call me a tart or a fool. They will say I have ter­ri­ble taste in men. They will say I’m a bad wife, I am too impul­sive. But if they want to do any of that, they’ll have to stop say­ing I’m with you. It won’t fit their sto­ry any­more.”
“I get it,” she said, grab­bing a plate and tak­ing the burg­ers off the grill.
“OK, good,” I said.
“You’ll do what­ev­er you have to do. But this is the last I want to hear about it. And I want it to be over and done with as soon as pos­si­ble.”
“OK.”
“And when it’s over, I want us to move in togeth­er.”
“Celia, we can’t do that.”
“You said this would be so effec­tive that no one would ever men­tion us.”
The thing is, I want­ed us to move in togeth­er, too. I want­ed it very much. “OK,” I said. “When it’s over, we’ll talk about mov­ing in togeth­er.”
“OK,” she said. “Then we have a deal.”
I put my hand out to shake hers, but she waved it away. She didn’t want to shake on some­thing that sad, that vul­gar.
“And if it doesn’t work with Mick Riva?” she asked.
“It’s gonna work.”