“That sounds fantastic! Let’s do it!” Maxi sat straight up, naked, covered in mud, with something thick slicking back her hair, and pulled the cucumber slices off her eyes. “Where are my shoes?” She looked down at herself. “Where are my clothes?”
“Lie down,” I said with a laugh. Maxi lay down again.
“What’s Steve Madden?”
“It’s a great shoe store. One time I wandered in there, and it was the No Big Feet sale. All the size tens were half-price. I think it was the happiest day of my life, footwear-wise.”
“That sounds so great,” Maxi said dreamily. “Now, then. What’s Virgil’s?”
“Barbecue,” I said. “They do these great ribs and fried chicken, and biscuits with maple butter… but you’re a vegetarian, right?”
“Only on the record,” said Maxi. “I love ribs.”
“Do you think we can do it? I mean, won’t people recognize you? And what about April?” I looked at her shyly. “And… I mean, not to pressure you or anything, but if we could talk about your movie for a little while… so I can write my story, and my editor doesn’t kill me.”
“But of course,” said Maxi grandly. “Ask me anything at all.”
“Later,” I said. “I don’t want to take advantage.”
“Oh, go ’head!” She giggled merrily, and started writing my article: “Maxi Ryder is naked in a downtown spa, doused in aromatic extracts, musing on her lost love.”
I heaved myself onto one elbow so that I could look at her.
“Do you really want to get into the lost love thing? I mean, that was the one thing that April was a demon about. She only wanted reporters to ask you about your work.”
“But the thing about being an actor is that you get to take your life – your pain – and make it work for you.” She took what sounded like a deep cleansing breath. “All things serve a purpose,” she said. “I know that if I’m ever called upon to play a woman scorned… say, dumped publicly on a talk show… I’ll be ready.”
“You think that’s bad? My ex-boyfriend writes the men’s sex column for Moxie.”
“Really?” she asked. “I was in Moxie last fall. ‘Maxi on Moxie.’ It was pretty stupid. Does your ex ever write about you?”
I sighed miserably. “I’m his favorite topic. It’s not a lot of fun.”
“What?” asked Maxi. “Did he talk about something personal?”
“Yeah,” I said. “My weight, for starters.”
Maxi sat straight up again. “ ‘Loving a Larger Woman?’ That was you?”
Damn. Had everyone in the world read that stupid thing?
“That was me.”
“Wow.” Maxi looked at me – not, I hope, to try to figure out how much I weighed, and whether it could genuinely have been more than Bruce. “I read it on the plane,” she said apologetically. “I don’t read Moxie, normally, but it was a really long flight, and I got bored, so I read, like, three months’ worth”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said. “I’m sure a lot of people read it.”
She lay down again. “Were you the one who called him the human bidet?” she asked.
Even under the mud, I was blushing again. “Never to his face,” I said.
“Well, it could be worse. I got dumped on a Barbara Walters special,” said Maxi.
“I know,” I said. “I saw.”
We lay in silence as the attendants sprayed the mud off of us with a half-dozen hoses. I felt like a very pampered, very exotic pet… that, or a particularly expensive cut of meat. Then we were covered with coarse salt, scrubbed down, showered off again, then wrapped in warm robes and sent off for facials.
“I think you had it worse than I did,” I reasoned, as we let our clay masks dry. “I mean, when Kevin talked about ending a long relationship, everyone who watched knew that he meant you. But with the article, the only people who knew that C. was me were…”
“Everyone who knew you,” said Maxi.
“Yeah. Pretty much.” I sighed. Between the seaweed and the salt and the New Age music and the warm and gentle almond-oiled hands of Charles the masseur, I felt like I was wrapped in some delicious cloud, miles above the world, away from telephones that didn’t ring and resentful coworkers and snooty publicists. Away from my weight… so much so that I wasn’t even worried what Charles amp; Company were thinking as they rubbed and oiled and rolled me around. There was just me and the sadness, but even that didn’t feel very heavy just then. It just felt there, like my nose, like the scar over my belly button I got from picking at a chicken pox scab when I was six. Just another part of me.
Maxi grabbed my hand. “We’re friends, right?” she said. And I thought, for a moment, that she probably didn’t mean it – that this was a version of her quickie, six-week, movie-set friendships. But I didn’t care.
I squeezed back. “Yes,” I said. “We’re friends.”
“You know what I think?” Maxi asked me. She raised a single finger-tip. Instantly, there were four more shots of tequila in front of us, each one paid for, no doubt, by a different adoring guy. She picked up a glass and looked at me. I did the same, and we gulped tequila. I set the glass down, wincing at the burn. We’d wound up at Hogs and Heifers after all. We’d had a late lunch at Virgil’s, where we’d sampled ribs, barbecued chicken, banana pudding, and cheese grits. Then we’d each bought about six pairs of Steve Madden shoes, reasoning that although we might feel fat, our feet didn’t. Then it was on to the Beauty Bar, where we’d bought all manner of cosmetics (I stuck mostly to sand-colored eyeshadow and concealing cream. Maxi splurged on everything with glitter). It all added up to much more than I’d planned on spending on either shoes or makeup in the next year, and possibly even the next several years, but I figured, when’s the next time I’ll be shopping with a movie star?
“You know what I think?” Maxi repeated.
“What’s that?”
“I think that we actually have a lot in common. It’s the body thing,” she said.
I squinted at her. “Huh?”
“We’re ruled by our bodies,” she pronounced, and sipped at a beer that someone had sent over. To me, this sounded very profound. This, perhaps, was because I was profoundly drunk. “You’re stuck with a body that you think men don’t want…”
“It’s a little more than a theory at this point,” I said, but Maxi wasn’t about to have her monologue interrupted.
“And I’m afraid that if I start eating things I like, I’ll stop looking the way I look, and nobody will want me. Worse than that,” she said, glaring through the cigarette haze, “nobody will pay me. So I’m stuck, too. But what we’re really trapped by is perceptions. You think you need to lose weight for someone to love you. I think if I gain weight, no one will love me. What we really need,” she said, pounding the bar for emphasis, “is to just stop thinking of ourselves as bodies and start thinking of ourselves as people.”
I stared at her admiringly. “Thass very deep.”
Maxi took a deep swallow of beer. “Heard it on Oprah.”
I did another shot. “Oprah’s deep. But I have to say that all things considered, I’d rather be trapped in your body than mine. At least I could wear bikinis.”
“But don’t you see? We’re both in prison. Prisons of Flesh.”
I giggled. Maxi looked offended. “What, you don’t agree?”
“No,” I said, snorting, “I just think that Prisons of Flesh sounds like the name of a porno movie.”
“Fine,” Maxi said when she’d stopped laughing. “But I have a valid point.”
“Of course you do,” I told her. “I know that I shouldn’t feel the way I do about how I look. I want to live in a world where people are judged by who they are instead of what size they wear.” I sighed. “But you know what I want even more than that?” Maxi looked at me expectantly. I hesitated, then took another tequila. “I want to forget about Bruce.”
“I have a theory about that, too,” Maxi announced triumphantly. “My
theory,” she said, “is that hate works.” She clinked her glass against mine. We did the shot, and upended the glasses on the sticky bar top, beneath the gently swaying clothesline of brassieres that had once cupped the breasts of the famous.
“I can’t hate him,” I said sadly. Suddenly my lips felt as though they were forming words a good foot or two away from my face, like they’d decided to just detach themselves and head for greener pastures. It was a common side effect when I’d been enjoying too many libations. That, and a liquid sensation in my knees and wrists and elbows, like my joints were coming unhinged. When I got drunk I started remembering things. And right now, because there was Grateful Dead on the jukebox (“Cassidy,” I thought), what I was remembering was how we’d gone to pick up Bruce’s friend George to go to a Dead show, and while we were waiting we’d slipped into the study and I’d given him a very quick, extremely hot blow job underneath the stuffed deer’s head mounted on the wall. Physically I was sitting at Hogs and Heifers, but in my head I was on my knees in front of him, my hands cupping his ass, his knees pressing my chest as he trembled and gasped that he loved me, thinking that I was made for this, made for nothing but this.
“Sure you can,” Maxi urged, yanking me out of the basement and into the tequila-soaked present. “Tell me the worst thing about him.”
“He was really sloppy.”
She crinkled her nose adorably. “That’s not that bad.”
“Oh, you have no idea! He had all this hair, see, and it would get in the shower drain, and he’d never clean his shower, but every once in a while he’d just, like, scoop up a clump of this disgusting, awful, soap-scummy hair and, like, park it in a corner of the tub. The first time I saw it I screamed.”
We did another shot. Maxi’s cheeks were flushed bright, her eyes were gleaming.
“Also,” I continued, “also he had disgusting toenails.” I burped, as delicately as I could, against the back of my hand. “They were all yellow and thick and raggedy…”
“Fungus,” said Maxi knowledgeably.
“And then there was his minibar,” I said, warming to the task. “Every time his parents went on a plane, they’d bring him those mini-bottles of vodka and scotch. He’d keep them in a shoebox, and whenever anyone would come over for a drink, he’d say, ‘Have something from the minibar.’ ” I paused, considering. “Actually, that was kind of cute.”
“I was going to say,” agreed Maxi.
“But it got annoying after a while. I mean, I’d come over, I’d have a terrible headache, I’d just want a vodka and tonic, and off he’d go to the minibar. I think he was just too cheap to shell out for an actual bottle of his own.”
“Tell me,” asked Maxi. “Was he really good in bed?”
I tried to prop my head in my hand, but my elbow wasn’t doing its job, and I wound up almost bouncing my forehead off the bar. Maxi laughed at me. The bartender scowled. I asked for a glass of water. “You wanna know the truth?”
“No, I want you to lie to me. I’m a movie star. Everyone else does.”
“The truth,” I said, “the truth is that…”
Maxi was laughing, leaning in close. “C’mon, Cannie, let me have it.”
“Well, he was very willing to try new things, which I appreciated…”
“Come on. No editori… editorial…” She closed her eyes, and her mouth. “No spin. I asked a simple question. Was he any good?”
“The truth” I tried again. “The truth is that he was very… small.”
Her eyes widened. “Small, you mean… down there?”
“Small,” I repeated. “Tiny. Microscopic. Infinitesimal!” There. If I could say that word, I couldn’t be as wasted as I thought I was. “I mean, not when it was hard. When it was hard it was pretty normal-sized. But when it was soft, it was like it telescoped back into his body, and it just looked like this little…” I tried to say it, but I was laughing too hard.
“What? C’mon, Cannie. Stop laughing. Sit up straight. Tell me!”
“Hairy acorn,” I finally managed. Maxi whooped. Tears came to her eyes, and somehow I was sideways, my head in her lap. “Hairy acorn!” she repeated.
“Shh!” I shushed her, trying to maneuver myself upright.
“Hairy acorn!”
“Maxi!”
“What? Do you think he’s going to hear me?”
“He lives in New Jersey,” I said very seriously.
Maxi climbed onto the bar and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Attention, bar patrons,” she called. “Hairy Acorn resides in New Jersey.”
“If you’re not gonna show us your tits, then get off the bar!” shouted a drunk guy in a cowboy hat. Maxi very elegantly gave him the finger, then climbed down.
“It could almost be a proper name,” she said. “Harry Acorn. Harry A. Corn.”
“You can’t tell anynone. Anyone,” I slurred.
“Don’t worry. I won’t. And I seriously doubt that me and Mr. Corn travel in the same circles.”
“He lives in New Jersey,” I said again, and Maxi laughed until tequila came out of her nose.
“So basically,” she said, once she’d stopped spluttering, “you’re pining for a guy with a small willy who treated you badly?”
“He didn’t treat me badly,” I said. “He was very sweet… and attentive… and…”
But she wasn’t listening. “Sweet and attentive are a dime a dozen. And so, I’m sorry to inform you, are small willies. You can do better.”
“I have to get over him.”
“So get over him! I insist!”
“What’s the secret?”
“Hate!” said Maxi. “Like I said before.”
But I couldn’t hate him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Against my will, I remembered something tremendously tender. How once, around Christmas, I’d told him to pretend he was Santa Claus, and I pretended I had come to the mall to have my picture taken. How I’d perched on his lap, taking care to plant my feet firmly on the floor so I wouldn’t rest all my weight on him, and whispered in his ear, “Is it true that Santa comes just once a year?” How he’d laughed, and how he’d gasped when I put one hand against his chest and shoved him flat back on the bed and snuggled against him while he performed an impromptu and doubtlessly off-key rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
“Here,” said Maxi, shoving a shot of tequila into my hand. “Medicine.”
I gulped it down. She grabbed my chin and stared into my eyes. It looked like there were two of her – saucer-blue eyes, cascading hair, the geometrically perfect sprinkling of freckles, the chin just a shade too pointed, so that she wouldn’t be perfect, but overwhelmingly endearing instead. I blinked, and she turned into one person again. Maxi studied me carefully. “You still love him,” she said. I bowed my head. “Yes,” I whispered.
She let go of my chin. My head hit the bar. Maxi pulled me back upright by my barrettes. The bartender was looking concerned. “I think maybe she’s had enough,” he said. Maxi ignored him.
“Maybe you should call him,” she said.
“I can’t,” I told her, suddenly acutely aware that I was very, very drunk. “I’ll make a fool of myself.”
“There are worse things than just looking foolish,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Losing someone you love, because you’re too proud to call and lay it on the line,” she said. “That’s worse. Now: What’s his number?”
“Maxi…”
“Give me the number.”
“This is a really bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I sighed, suddenly feeling all the tequila pressing against my skull. “Because what if he doesn’t want me?”
“Then it’s better that you know that, once and for all. We can go in like surgeons and cauterize the wound. And I’ll teach you the restorative powers of hating his guts.” She held out the phone. “Now. The number.”
I took the phone. It was a tiny thing, a toy of a telepho
ne, no longer than my thumb. I unfolded it clumsily, and squinted, poking at the digits with my pinkie.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Bruce. It’s Cannie.”
“Hi-ii,” he said slowly, sounding surprised.
“I know this is kinda weird, but I’m in New York, in this bar, and you’ll never guess who I’m here with…”
I paused for a breath. He didn’t say anything.
“I have to tell you something…”
“Um, Cannie…”
“No, I just want, I just need… you just have to lishen. Listen,” I finally managed. The words came in a rush. “Breaking up with you was a mistake. I know that now. And Bruce, I’m so sorry… and I miss you so much, and it’s just getting worse and worse every day, and I know I don’t deserve it, but if you could gimme ’nother chance I’d be so good to you…”
I could hear the springs creak as he shifted his weight on the bed. And someone else’s voice in the background. A female voice.
I squinted at the clock on the wall, behind the dangling bras. It was one in the morning.
“But I’m innerupting,” I said dumbly.
“Hey, Cannie, this actually isn’t such a good time…”
“I thought you needed space,” I said, “because of your father dying. But that’s not it, is it? It’s me. You don’t want me.”
I heard a bumping sound, then a far-off, murmured conversation. He’d probably put his hand over the receiver.
“Who is she?” I yelled.
“Look, is there a good time when I can call you back?” Bruce asked.
“Are you gonna write about her?” I cried. “Does she get to be an initial in your wonderful, fabulous column? Is she good in bed?”
“Cannie,” Bruce said slowly, “let me call you back.”
“Don’t. Don’t worry. You don’t have to,” I said, and started stabbing at buttons on the telephone until I found the one that switched it off.
I handed the phone back to Maxi, who was staring at me gravely.
“That didn’t sound good,” she said.
I felt the room spinning. I felt like I was going to throw up. I felt like I’d never be able to smile again in my life, that, somewhere in my heart it was always going to be one o’clock in the morning, and I’d be calling the man I loved, and there’d be another woman in his bed.
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