Chap­ter 28

I wore a cream-col­ored cock­tail dress with heavy gold bead­ing and a plung­ing neck­line. I pulled my long blond hair into a high pony­tail. I wore dia­mond ear­rings.
I glowed.

The first thing you need to do to get a man to elope with you is to chal­lenge him to go to Las Vegas.
You do this by being out at an L.A. club and hav­ing a few drinks togeth­er. You ignore the impulse to roll your eyes at how eager he is to have his pic­ture tak­en with you. You rec­og­nize that every­one is play­ing every­one else. It’s only fair that he’s play­ing you at the same time as you’re play­ing him. You rec­on­cile these facts by real­iz­ing that what you both want from each oth­er is com­ple­men­tary.
You want a scan­dal.
He wants the world to know he screwed you.
The two things are one and the same.
You con­sid­er lay­ing it out for him, explain­ing what you want, explain­ing what you’re will­ing to give him. But you’ve been famous long enough to know that you nev­er tell any­one any­thing more than you have to.
So instead of say­ing I’d like us to make tomorrow’s papers, you say, “Mick, have you ever been to Vegas?”
When he scoffs, as if he can’t believe you’re ask­ing him if he’s ever been to Vegas, you know this will be eas­i­er than you thought.
“Some­times I just get in the mood to roll dice, you know?” you say. Sex­u­al impli­ca­tions are bet­ter when they are grad­ual, when they snow­ball over time.
“You want to roll dice, baby?” he says, and you nod.
“But it’s prob­a­bly too late,” you say. “And we’re already here. And here’s OK, I sup­pose. I’m hav­ing a fine time.”
“My guys can call a plane and have us there like that.” He snaps his fin­gers.
“No,” you say. “That’s too much.”
“Not for you,” he says. “Noth­ing is too much for you.”
You know what he real­ly means is Noth­ing is too much for me.
“You could real­ly do that?” you say.
An hour and a half lat­er, you’re on a plane.
You have a few drinks, you sit in his lap, you let his hand wan­der, and you slap it back. He has to ache for you and believe there is only one way to have you. If he doesn’t want you enough, if he believes he can get you anoth­er way, it’s all over. You’ve lost.
When the plane lands and he asks if the two of you should book a room at the Sands, you must demur. You must be shocked. You must tell him, in a voice that makes it clear you assumed he already knew, that you don’t have sex out­side of mar­riage.
You must seem both stead­fast and heart­bro­ken about this. He must think, She wants me. And the only way we can make it hap­pen is to get mar­ried.
For a moment, you con­sid­er the idea that what you’re doing is unkind. But then you remem­ber that this man is going to bed you and then divorce you once he’s got­ten what he wants. So no one is a saint here.
You’re going to give him what he’s ask­ing for. So it’s a fair trade.
You go to the craps table and play a cou­ple of rounds. You keep los­ing at first, as does he, and you wor­ry that this is sober­ing both of you. You know the key to impul­siv­i­ty is believ­ing you are invin­ci­ble. No one goes around throw­ing cau­tion to the wind unless the wind is blow­ing their way.
You drink cham­pagne, because it makes every­thing seem cel­e­bra­to­ry. It makes tonight seem like an event.
When peo­ple rec­og­nize the two of you, you hap­pi­ly agree to get your pic­ture tak­en with them. Every time it hap­pens, you hang on to him. You are telling him, in no small way, This is what it could be like if I belonged to you.
You hit a win­ning streak at the roulette table. You cheer so ebul­lient­ly that you jump up and down. You do this because you know where his eyes are going to go. You let him catch you catch­ing him.
You let him put his hand on your ass as the wheel spins again.
This time, when you win, you push your ass against him.
You let him lean into you and say, “Do you want to get out of here?”
You say, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t trust myself with you.”
You can­not bring up mar­riage first. You already said the word ear­li­er. You have to wait for him to say it. He said it in the papers. He will say it again. But you have to wait. You can­not rush it.
He has one more drink.
The two of you win three more times.
You let his hand graze your upper thigh, and then you push it away.
It is two A.M., and you are tired. You miss the love of your life. You want to go home. You would rather be with her, in bed, hear­ing the light buzz of her snor­ing, watch­ing her sleep, than be here. There is noth­ing about here that you love.
Except what being here will afford you.
You imag­ine a world where the two of you can go out to din­ner togeth­er on a Sat­ur­day night and no one thinks twice about it. It makes you want to cry, the sim­plic­i­ty of it, the small­ness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the small­est free­doms. The dai­ly peace of lov­ing plain­ly.
Tonight feels like both a small and a high price to pay for that life.
“Baby, I can’t take it,” he says. “I have to be with you. I have to see you. I have to love you.”
This is your chance. You have a fish on the line, and you have to gen­tly reel him in.
“Oh, Mick,” you say. “We can’t. We can’t.”
“I think I love you, baby,” he says. There are tears in his eyes, and you real­ize he’s prob­a­bly more com­plex than you have giv­en him cred­it for.
You’re more com­plex than he’s giv­en you cred­it for, too.
“Do you mean it?” you ask him, as if you des­per­ate­ly hope it’s true.
“I think I do, baby. I do. I love every­thing about you. We only just met, but I feel like I can’t live with­out you.” What he means is that he thinks he can’t live with­out screw­ing you. And that, you believe.
“Oh, Mick,” you say, and then you say noth­ing more. Silence is your best friend.
He nuz­zles your neck. It’s slop­py, and it feels akin to meet­ing a New­found­land. But you pre­tend you love it. You two are in the bright lights of a Vegas casi­no. Peo­ple can see you. You have to pre­tend that you do not notice them. That way, tomor­row, when they talk to the papers, they will say that the two of you were car­ry­ing on like a cou­ple of teenagers.
You hope that Celia doesn’t pick up a sin­gle rag with your face on it. You think she’s smart enough not to. You think she knows how to pro­tect her­self. But you can’t be sure. The first thing you’re going to do when you get home, when this is all over, is to make sure she knows how impor­tant she is, how beau­ti­ful she is, how much you feel your life would be over if she were not in it.
“Let’s get mar­ried, baby,” he says into your ear.
There it is.
For you to grab.
But you can’t look too eager.
“Mick, are you crazy?”
“You make me this crazy.”
“We can’t get mar­ried!” you say, and when he doesn’t say any­thing back for a sec­ond, you wor­ry that you’ve pushed slight­ly too far. “Or can we?” you ask. “I mean, I sup­pose we could!”
“Of course we can,” he says. “We’re on top of the world. We can do any­thing we want.”
You throw your arms around him, and you press against him, to let him know how excited—how surprised—you are by this idea and to remind him what he’s doing it for. You know your val­ue to him. It would be sil­ly to waste an oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind him.
He picks you up and sweeps you away. You whoop and holler so every­one looks. Tomor­row they will tell the papers he car­ried you off. It’s mem­o­rable. They will remem­ber it.
Forty min­utes lat­er, the two of you are drunk and stand­ing in front of each oth­er at an altar.
He promis­es to love you for­ev­er.
You promise to obey.
He car­ries you over the thresh­old of the nicest room at the Trop­i­cana. You gig­gle with fake sur­prise when he throws you onto the bed.
And now here comes the sec­ond-most-impor­tant part.
You can­not be a good lay. You must dis­ap­point.
If he likes it, he’ll want to do it again. And you can’t do that. You can’t do this more than once. It will break your heart.
When he tries to rip your dress off, you have to say, “Stop, Mick, Christ. Get a hold of your­self.”
After you take the dress off slow­ly, you have to let him look at your breasts for as long as he wants to. He has to see every inch of them. He’s been wait­ing for so long to final­ly see the end­ing of that shot in Boute-en-Train.
You have to remove all mys­tery, all intrigue.
You make him play with your breasts so long he gets bored.
And then you open your legs.
You lie there, stiff as a board under­neath him.
And here is the one part of this you can’t quite come to terms with but you can’t quite avoid, either. He won’t use a con­dom. And even though women you know have got­ten hold of birth con­trol pills, you don’t have them, because you had no need for them until a few days ago when you hatched this plan.
You cross your fin­gers behind your back.
You close your eyes.
You feel his heavy body fall on top of you, and you know that he is done.
You want to cry, because you remem­ber what sex used to mean to you, before. Before you real­ized how good it could feel, before you dis­cov­ered what you liked. But you push it out of your mind. You push it all out of your mind.
Mick doesn’t say any­thing after­ward.
And you don’t, either.
You fall asleep, hav­ing put on his under­shirt in the dark because you didn’t want to sleep naked.
In the morn­ing, when the sun shines through the win­dows and burns your eyes, you put your arm over your face.
Your head is pound­ing. Your heart is hurt­ing.
But you’re almost at the fin­ish line.
You catch his eye. He smiles. He grabs you.
You push him off and say, “I don’t like to have sex in the morn­ing.”
“What does that mean?” he says.
You shrug. “I’m sor­ry.”
He says, “C’mon, baby,” and lies on top of you. You’re not sure he’d lis­ten if you said no one more time. And you’re not sure you want to find out the answer. You’re not sure you could bear it.
“OK, fine, if you have to,” you say. And when he lifts him­self off you and looks you in the eye, you real­ize it has accom­plished what you had hoped. You have tak­en all the fun out of it for him.
He shakes his head. He gets out of bed. He says, “You know, you’re noth­ing like I imag­ined.”
It doesn’t mat­ter how gor­geous a woman is, to a man like Mick Riva, she’s always less attrac­tive after he’s had sex with her. You know this. You allow it to hap­pen. You do not fix your hair. You pick at the mas­cara flakes on your face.
You watch Mick step into the bath­room. You hear him turn on the show­er.
When he comes out, he sits down next to you on the bed.
He is clean. You have not bathed.
He smells like soap. You smell like booze.
He is sit­ting up. You are lying down.
This, too, is a cal­cu­la­tion.
He has to feel like the pow­er is all his.
“Hon­ey, I had a great time,” he says.
You nod.
“But we were so drunk.” He speaks as if he’s talk­ing to a child.
“Both of us. We had no idea what we were doing.”
“I know,” you say. “It was a crazy thing to do.”