I slump against the back of the bench. “I do. I really do.”
She pauses for a beat before asking, “And the husband?”
Ah. There it is. “He’s good.”
“That’s it?” she asks, voice going quieter. “That’s really all I get? You’ve been gone for two weeks, living with Baby Adonis, and all you can tell me is ‘he’s good’?”
I close my eyes and tilt my head into the sun. “He’s so sweet but he works constantly. And when he’s home, I’m basically as seductive as a cardboard box.”
“Well, have you made any other friends? Hot friends. You know, for me?” she asks, and I can hear the smile in her voice.
I hum. “Not really. I mean, it’s been a week and a half, and I was sick for a lot of that. I met the woman downstairs, and she barely speaks English but we make it work.”
“Have Ansel introduce you to some people for when he’s gone.”
“Yeah, I haven’t even heard about any of his friends.” My thoughts trip on this a little. “I mean don’t get me wrong, we get so little time together that I’m not really sure I want to share him. But . . . is that weird? Do you think it’s strange that he hasn’t mentioned getting together with some people here?”
“Hmm, well . . . either he has a stack of dead girlfriends somewhere that he’s trying to keep hidden—”
“Ha ha.”
“—or it’s like you said and he’s just busy. There were literally weeks at a time where we barely saw my mom growing up because she was on set.”
I pull at a thread on my T-shirt, wondering if she could be on to something. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Orrrrr,” she starts, “he’s a boy and therefore likes to pretend you’re happy just walking around his apartment naked all day. That’s the hypothesis that gets my vote.”
“I’ll take it.”
“You’ll be on a plane in a few weeks. Enjoy the freedom. Fill your days with sun and wine. Naked times with hot French boys. One in particular.”
“We had the most awkward sex in the history of the world the other night. I couldn’t stop overthinking everything. And nothing else for the past three days and I want to touch him constantly. It’s torture.” And it is. As soon as I say it, I think of the smooth skin of his neck, the gentle bite of his teeth, the clean lines of his chest and stomach.
“So get out of your head,” she says in a dramatic Russian accent, “and give his head some attention, if you catch my drift.”
“I don’t, Whorelow. Can you explain that to me? His . . . ‘head’? Do you mean his penis? I wish you would stop speaking in riddles.”
“Well, tell me something. Why was it easy in Vegas, and not easy yhere?”
“I don’t know . . .” I wrinkle my nose, thinking. “I just pretended to be the kind of girl who would do something like that. One-night stand and sexy and blah blah.”
Laughing, she asks, “So be that girl again.”
“It’s not really that easy. It’s weirder here. Like, everything is loaded. ‘We should have sex because I am very attracted to you and also we are married. Married people have sex. Beep boop boop, system reboot failure.’”
“You’re doing the robot right now, aren’t you?”
I look at my hand raised at my side, fingers pointed and pressed together. “Maybe.”
Her laugh gets louder and she pushes the words out: “Then be someone less neurotic, you troll.”
“Oh, dude, I should have thought of that, Whorelow. I could totally just be someone less neurotic. Thanks so much, my problems are solved.”
“Okay, fine,” she says, and I can just see her face, can just see the way she would lean in and grow serious about her favorite topic ever: sex. “Here’s a suggestion just for you, Sugarcube: get a costume.”
I feel like the sky has just opened up and the universe has dropped an anvil on my head.
Or a gauntlet.
I close my eyes and remember Vegas, how easy it was to be playful rather than earnest. To pretend to be someone braver than I am. And the morning I used his hand as a sex toy. It worked then, too. Being someone else, getting lost in the part.
I feel the idea tickling in my thoughts before it spreads, wings expanding with a rush.
Play.
What did you love most about dancing, he’d asked me.
The ability to be anyone up onstage, I told him. I want a different life tonight.
And then I chose a different life but it sits here, wilting.
“Do I know you or what?” Harlow asks, her smiling pushing all the way across the ocean through the phone line.
EVEN AFTER MY epiphany that it helps me relax when I’m pretending, I’m still not really sure how to tackle this. A costume . . . like sexy underwear to get me in the right headspace? Or is Harlow really suggesting I pull out all the stops and go full-on, jazz-hands, showtime? My phone continually buzzes with texts from her, all of them filled with links and addresses within an area known as Place Pigalle.