. . .
Mike’s secret to becoming one of the most beloved actors in Hollywood was simple. He never talked about himself. Every conversation that he had with anyone in the business was always about the other person, and this had been surprisingly effective in a town known for its vanities.
So it took a couple of hours and several awkward false starts for him to really start telling me his life story. It didn’t come out as one neat package, but in spurts and fits over the next three days as we did everything together.
I had done my research on him before showing up, but still there were a lot of surprising details that E! True Hollywood Story and Google hadn’t been able to give me.
When he was growing up, his crackhead mother had a nasty habit of getting high at night and telling him that his father had left them because of him. She would say it over and over again until Mike had been reduced to tears and apologies.
Also, because his mother had been consistent only in spending her entire paycheck on rocks as opposed to, say, food for her child, Mike had learned from an early age to depend on the kindness of strangers. As he got older and less cute, he had happened upon tricks like laying the attention on thick with others in order to keep food in his stomach and clothes on his back.
This template had worked out well for him, until the first time he played poker at Amherst. From what I could tell, the rush of taking money off of rich kids who had gotten everything handed to them their entire lives had been the first authentic emotion that Mike had felt since the fear and desperation of his early years. And he had been pursuing that feeling ever since. Even after he stopped winning. Even when they came for his cars and his furniture and finally his career after he had missed one too many call times in Hollywood because he was at a blackjack table in Las Vegas.
Near the end of our first night of talking, I said, “I’m going to move in with you for a few months. Do you have an air mattress?”
I guess it must have been real lonely on top of Mike’s mountain of debt, because he didn’t offer up a word of protest except “I don’t have an air mattress, but there’s still a bed in one of the guest rooms.”
“No,” I said, “I need an air mattress. I’ve got one at my place.”
So Mike drove me back to my apartment in his Bentley convertible.
“You’re coming in, too,” I said, when he tried to remain behind in the idling car.
Again, he didn’t question me, just turned off the engine and came up to my apartment with me.
Once inside, I went to the closet and took out the rolling suitcase that James had given me. A sharp pang hit me when I touched it. For a moment I was overcome with the memory of his hands on my body, touching me everywhere. I wondered what he was doing now. Did he even miss me? Or had he already moved on—it had been over three months now.
I wanted to be silent again. For a few moments, I wanted that so bad I could feel my voice leaving me. But I had work to do. I shook off the temptation, and pressed on, unzipping the suitcase and throwing a few pairs of jeans and Strokes T-shirts into it. “Make yourself useful and grab my toiletries off the sink,” I said to Mike.
He immediately did as I said. “Toothpaste, too?” he asked inside the bathroom.
“No, I’ll just use yours. Can you grab my tampons though? They’re beside the toilet.”