“What happened when she started school?”
The smile vanished. “Valerie sent Ilana back to her mother in Massachusetts. Her mother had sobered up by then, so that was supposed to be all right. And Valerie wanted a career; she was being stifled by having a child. Never mind that I couldn’t see my daughter anymore.”
“But you must have . . .”
“Oh, I see her as often as I can. I see her but Valerie doesn’t. As far as Valerie’s concerned, Ilana is just a way to get money out of me now. Money or . . . whatever else she wants. There are rules for everything.”
Emily had been stroking his chest out of an instinctive, probably useless, need to comfort him. Now he caught her hand and pressed it to his lips.
She said, aware that she was speaking out of sheer nerves, “It’s funny about names. But I work with someone called Valerie who’s just like that. Kind of ruthless. I mean, I know it doesn’t mean anything, really. It’s just a coincidence.”
“Not as much of a coincidence as you might think,” Ralph said. “It’s the same person.”
“Oh.” A chill passed over Emily. Valerie LeBlanc. Ralph Anderman was going to be her first—and for some reason Valerie had been convinced he would do anything she said. But he had already been her first, thirteen years ago. He could be counted on to do anything Valerie said. He could be counted on not to tell anyone that she wasn’t really a virgin. Valerie had all her bases covered, as usual.
“Apparently, Valerie doesn’t like you very much,” Ralph said. “In my experience, that’s to your credit.”
“How did she know?” Emily said, her voice weak and hoarse. “Does she have you followed?”
“I told her.” He made a face. “I should have realized that was stupid, but it’s been years since Valerie cared who I went out with. This seems to have opened her wounds somehow.”
“But you can’t let her tell you what to do,” Emily said, with a growing panic in her heart. “I mean, it’s not healthy. It can’t be good for anyone.”
“Listen,” Ralph said, pressing her hand to his chest. “Ilana doesn’t know her mother is Valerie LeBlanc. She doesn’t know her mother was fifteen when she was born. She thinks we were married, that Valerie was nineteen, that Valerie was the love of my life. . . . If this comes out, it’s going to be ugly. A story for the gossip magazines about a millionaire and two porn stars. Secret love child, the whole nine yards.”
“But she’ll have to find out someday,” Emily said, feeling dangerously close to tears. Whatever it meant, she couldn’t lose this man. The thought of it made her desperate and angry.
“I know,” Ralph said. “But she’s thirteen. And her mother has already abandoned her. I don’t know how I could put her through that.”
Emily opened her mouth to protest but caught herself. She realized she had nothing to say. She didn’t know what it was like to have a child. And part of her fury in all this was a pitiful jealousy of him for having that in his life when—this was what she was realizing, with a sinking feeling—without Ralph, she might never have it. She couldn’t imagine moving on from him, having a family with anyone else.
I’ve had everyone else,
she thought sadly.
No one else will do.
“Trust me,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I can. There are some things I can’t do—I can’t sell out my daughter to have you. But anything I can do . . .”
Emily shut her eyes for a moment, trying to still her turbulent feelings. Then she looked into his eyes and said, “Whatever you need.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I do love you, Emily.”
Then they were kissing again, and she felt the desire begin to awaken again.
This can’t be wrong,
she told herself as Ralph began to move against her.
But even if it’s wrong, I won’t give it up.
TWELVE
B
y the time Jared got back to his dressing room, Zaza had drunk two of his beers, tried on his leather jacket (and forgotten to take it off ), and was playing “Sympathy for the Devil,” almost recognizably, on his keyboard. The door had already opened behind her before she realized it. Then she had spun around, her arms crossed over her chest as if she would be able to hide the jacket from view, her eyes wide with horror.
“Oh, no! I thought I would hear you coming from miles off!” she said.
Jared burst out laughing. “And then you would . . . ?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to be wearing your jacket,” she said miserably. “It makes it so obvious.”
“What? That you steal people’s clothes?”
“I wasn’t going to steal it!” she protested. “You know I wasn’t!”
He laughed again and closed the door behind him, coming forward to sit on his old armchair. “I still don’t know what’s obvious.”
“Well, if it’s not obvious, I’m not going to tell you.”
He leaned back in the chair, smiling at her. There was a wonderful, tickly sort of nervousness in his chest. “It’s not like you to hide things,” he said.
She blinked at him. “You mean, you thought about what I’m like?” Then she ducked her head, looking down at her lap in shy confusion.
He took a deep breath, wanting to impulsively go over and hug her, rumple her hair. Wanting to impulsively kiss her and talk outrageous silly love talk. Wanting to be the impulsive kind of man he wasn’t.
I’m semi-impulsive,
he told himself.
Just okay as far as impulsiveness goes.
He couldn’t help thinking that a girl like Zaza would eventually find him boring. Her impulsiveness score would be off the charts.
Now he said, semi-impulsively, “I’ve mostly thought you’re wonderful. I mean, you could have
all
my jackets, and I’d sit around thinking about you wearing them.”
Zaza was still studying her own knees furiously. She said, “That sounds like you like me.”
“Zaza, look at me,” he said, feeling like he was going to see stars in a minute, he was so breathlessly smitten. When she looked up uncertainly, he said, “I like you
so much
it’s like a whole new category of like.”
Then a smile bloomed on her face and turned into a grin. “It’s not platonic liking or anything awful like that?”
“What do
you
think?”
She was hugging herself in the bulky leather jacket, beaming at him. “I wished for this when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake once. It was before I met you. Is that creepy? I thought you might think it’s creepy and then I would have to keep it a secret from you. And since I can’t keep secrets, I thought I should tell you up front.”
“I don’t care if it’s creepy,” he said. “Would you come here? You’re making me wait.”
“But that’s supposed to be a good thing,” she said, getting up hastily and crossing the space between them in one second flat. As she jumped onto his lap, she said, “You’re supposed to play hard to get. If you’re a girl. I mean, don’t you play hard to get; that would be awful.”
“Don’t play hard to get,” he said, taking her hand in both of his.
She stared at his hands, her lips slightly parted. Then she bent her head, kissed his knuckles, and rubbed her cheek against them, looking up at him blissfully. She said, “I’ll play hard to get later. I’m no good at deferred gratification.”
“Then kiss me.”
The grin came back. But she quelled it, reasoning that she couldn’t kiss him and grin at the same time. She said faintly, “Okay.”
The kiss went on and on. If he wasn’t seeing stars, Jared was feeling them—tiny, fiery bursts of emotion mingled with sensation. In his mind, they were red and gold, and he could almost imagine them circling around him as if he were a cartoon character that had been clobbered on the head. She was so tiny in his arms, so fragile and alive. Her long hair was so fine and soft it seemed to be made from a different material from normal hair—as if she alone had spun silk on her head while everyone else had cotton. The skin on her arms was likewise preternaturally soft and smooth, and her arms so slender he felt like a massive ox nuzzling a delicate fawn. He found himself mumbling, “You’re so beautiful. . . . You’re so incredibly beautiful.” And he was relieved rather than flattered when she blurted, “No, it’s you who’s the beautiful one. I’m so not!” in shy distress. He thought,
Thank God, she doesn’t see through me.
But when his palm grazed her small, firm breasts, feeling the hard nipples—which also felt delicate and tiny, maddeningly perfect and fine—he caught himself. He was pulling back from her, looking at her flushed, jubilant face, feeling as if they’d tumbling down a hill or run an obstacle course. He was breathing hard and felt undone, helpless—
wonderful
. He said, “That was, like, the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“No,” she said, dazed. “That can’t be true.”
“It’s true.”
“But it’s what I always dreamed you would say. Honestly.” She shook her head, the grin returning at double force.
He said, “But you understand why I’m not trying to take advantage of you now?”
At this, the grin vanished. His heart sank. Of course he would say the wrong thing. “No,” he blurted, “I mean, I don’t mean that it would be taking advantage. I mean, I’m so attracted to you. You can probably—” He had been about to say
feel it,
but then the crude reference to his hard-on seemed out of place. He realized that he had no idea how to be romantic. He had always fucked girls, several times, in front of a film crew, before he ever made any romantic speeches to them. Those romantic speeches, furthermore, were made out of a spirit of joie de vivre—as he now realized—rather than love. He had
loved
being with them and drinking ridiculous blender drinks with them in a revolving restaurant while all the men in the room stared and envied him. He had
loved
them looking into his eyes and acting coy and besotted. He had
loved
the fact that no one was really in love, and the protestations had none of the dragging weight of reality.
He had no idea how to be with a girl who was genuinely besotted. He had no idea how to be besotted himself.
He said, “Tell me what to say. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said cautiously. “I mean, I don’t know if you hurt me yet. Do you still like me?”
“So much. More and more.”
She sighed, and the bliss began to return to her face. “Okay. Then you can explain to me. Though I think I need another beer.”
She hopped off his lap and started toward the refrigerator, but paused halfway and took off his leather jacket carefully. She started to fold it one way, then changed her mind, shook it out and began to fold it another way. Seeing him watching, she said, “I’ve really got no idea how to fold clothes.”
“Just throw it down somewhere.”
“Oh.” She looked at it and hastily pressed a kiss to the collar before putting it down on the sofa. As she went to the refrigerator, she said, “Okay. Everything’s all right. Right? Everything’s all right?”
“Everything’s so all right. This is the most all right I’ve been in years.”
“I’m sorry I stole your beers,” she said, as she came back with another beer and crept back into his lap. “I was just waiting so long and I kept thinking about the beers. And then I thought they might belong to the channel, and I convinced myself that it was—”
“It was completely okay.”
She sighed. “That’s what I convinced myself.”
“Listen, Zaza. Like I said, I’m so attracted to you I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“A whole new category of attracted,” she said. “That’s what I feel.”
“Yes. And I don’t mean to assume that you want to sleep with me right now.”
“Oh, I do!”
“Okay.” He laughed. “So I’ll assume that. It’s just that we hardly know each other, and I kind of want to be normal. Or, not normal . . . special.”
“Special and normal.” She frowned. “You mean, if I was anyone else, you would have sex with me?” From the expression on her face, it was clear that she wanted to be anyone else.
“No. That’s not what I mean. I mean that I want to . . . I’d say I want you to be my girlfriend, but that’s probably really sudden.”
“In a good way.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t believe it.”
“But I just want to be sure of . . . what’s going on with us. Because I haven’t tried to have a girlfriend in so long. And the last time I tried, it was kind of a disaster.”
On Jared’s last day of being a boyfriend, he had been filming a sex scene for a movie, after which he was planning to take his girlfriend to a jewelry store as a surprise. He would walk her to the engagement ring section and go down on one knee. The girlfriend in question, Amanda, was a model—not a supermodel by any stretch of the imagination; just a woman with girl-next-door good looks who was paying her way through law school in a glamorous way. Jared wasn’t sure anymore why he had wanted to marry Amanda. He was probably no more in love with her than he’d been in love with a dozen previous girlfriends. It might have been that—unlike those previous girlfriends, who were mostly lighthearted, fickle porn actresses—Amanda had made it plain that she wanted to marry him.
The movie that day was one of those near-plotless, undignified things that got sold under titles with “ass” or “head” in them. He had worked with most of the people before, and when he arrived on the set, they had already shot two sex scenes and drunk a few bottles of champagne. The set was someone’s improbably huge Tribeca loft, but the assembled porn gang had managed to fill it with eye-smarting clouds of cigarette smoke. Adding to the smoke was a blazing fire in the fireplace, which was also heating the place to such tropical temperatures that even the crew were stripped down to their underwear. Amanda was coming to pick Jared up afterward, in order to drive him off to a weekend away in her family’s cottage in the Catskills, and he couldn’t help wondering what she was going to make of the scene. The only time she’d met him at work before, she had been a good sport about it, but afterward had asked, with a nervous smile, “Is it always like that?”