on the rebound had gotten married in Vegas two weeks after they met to a woman who was not Maxi.
“It’s a wonder she’s doing any press at all,” Roberto, the publicist at Midnight Oil, had told me the week before. Midnight Oil was a very small, somewhat obscure New York PR firm – leagues below the big agencies that Maxi’d typically deal with. But between Advanced Placement and Trembling, she’d spent six weeks in Israel making a tiny little movie, a period piece about a kibbutz during the Seven Day War… and tiny little movies generally had small-time publicity agencies, which was where Roberto came in.
Seven Day Soldier would probably never even have made it to American art houses, had it not been for the Oscar nomination Maxi had gotten for Trembling. And Maxi would probably never have done any publicity for the movie, except she’d signed on to it before she’d made it big, which meant she’d agreed to be paid bupkes, and to publicize the film “in any way the producers deem appropriate.”
So, needless to say, the producers saw a chance to at least have an enormous opening weekend based on the strength of Maxi buzz. They’d flown her in from a shoot in Australia, set her up in the penthouse of the Regency on the Upper East Side, and invited in what Roberto referred to as “a select group of reporters” to enjoy twenty-minute audiences with her. And Roberto, bless his loyal heart, had called me first.
“Are you interested?” he’d asked.
Of course I was, and Betsy was thrilled in the way that editors usually are when plummy scoops fall into their laps, even though Gabby grumbled about one-hit wonders and flashes in the pan.
I was happy. Roberto was happy. Then Maxi’s personal publicist got in on the act.
There I was, moping at my desk, counting the days since Bruce and I had spoken (ten), the length in minutes of the conversation (four), and contemplating making an appointment with a numerologist to figure out if the future held anything good for us, when the phone rang.
“This is April from NGH,” rapped the voice on the other end. “We understand you’re interested in speaking with Maxi Ryder?”
Interested? “I’m interviewing her Saturday at ten in the morning,” I told April. “Roberto from Midnight Oil set it up.”
“Yes. Well. We have a few questions before we sign off.”
“Who are you again?” I asked.
“April. From NGH.” NGH was one of the hugest and most notorious public relations firms in Hollywood. They were the people you called if you were famous, under forty, found yourself in the midst of some kind of unsavory and/or illegal mess and wanted to keep all but the most fawning and tractable press far, far away. Robert Downey hired NGH after he passed out in someone else’s bedroom in a heroin haze. Courtney Love had NGH redo her image after she’d redone her nose, her breasts, and her fashion, and they smoothed her transition from foul-mouthed grunge goddess to couture-clad sylph. At the Examiner, we called them Not Gonna Happen… as in, that interview you were hoping for, that profile you wanted to write? Not Gonna Happen. Now, evidently, Maxi Ryder had enlisted their assistance as well.
“We would like your assurance,” April from NGH began, “that this interview will focus exclusively on Maxi’s work.”
“Her work?”
“Her roles,” said April. “Her acting. Not her personal life.”
“She’s a celebrity,” I said mildly. Or at least I thought it came out that way. “I consider that her work. Being a famous person.”
April’s voice could have frozen hot fudge. “Her work is acting,” she said. “Any attention that she gets is only because of that work.”
Normally I would have let it drop – just gritted my teeth and grinned and agreed to whatever ridiculous conditions they wanted to impose. But I hadn’t slept the night before, and this April was pushing all the wrong buttons. “Oh, come on!” I said. “Every time I open People magazine I see her in a slit skirt and big, dark, don’t-look-at-me glasses. And you’re telling me she just wants to be known as an actor?”
I’d hope that April would take my remarks in the half-joking manner I’d intended them. But I wasn’t sensing a thaw.
“You cannot ask her about her love life,” April said sternly.
I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “Terrific. Whatever. We’ll talk about the movie.”
“So you’re agreeing to the conditions?”
“Yes. I’m agreeing. No love life. No skirts. No nothing.”
“Then I’ll see what I can do.”
“I told you, Roberto already set up the interview!”
But I was talking to a dead line.
Two weeks later, when I finally left for the interview, it was a gray, drizzly Saturday morning in late November, the kind of day where it looks like everyone with means and money has fled the city and gone to the Bahamas, or their country cottage in the Poconos, and the streets are populated with the people they’d left behind: pockmarked delivery boys, black girls with braids, scruffy-looking dreadlocked white kids on bikes. Secretaries. Japanese tourists. A guy with a wart on his chin with two hairs sprouting from it, long, curly hairs that reached almost to his chest. He smiled and stroked them as I walked by. My lucky day.
I spent the twenty-block walk uptown trying not to think of Bruce and trying not to let my hair get too wet. The lobby of the Regency was huge, marble, blessedly quiet and mirror-lined, which let me appreciate, from three different angles, the zit that had sprouted on my forehead.
I was early, so I decided to loiter. The hotel gift shop boasted the typical assortment of overpriced bathrobes, $5 toothbrushes, and magazines in many languages, one of which happened to be the November Moxie. I grabbed it and flipped to Bruce’s column. “Going Down,” I read. “One Man’s Oral Adventures.” Hah! “Oral adventures” had not been Bruce’s forte. He had a little problem with excessive saliva. In a moment of margarita-soaked weakness I’d once referred to him as “the human bidet.” It had been that bad at the beginning. Of course, there was no way he’d mention that, I thought smugly, any more than he’d mention that I’d been the only girl he’d ever attempted that particular maneuver upon. And I flipped back to his column. “I once overheard my girlfriend refer to me as the human bidet,” read the pull-quote. He’d heard that? My face flamed.
“Miss? Are you planning to purchase that?” asked the woman behind the counter. So I did, with a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and a $4 bottle of water. Then I parked myself on one of the plush couches in the icy-cool lobby and began:
Going Down
When I was fifteen and a virgin, when I wore braces and the tighty whities my mother bought me, my friends and I used to laugh ourselves sick over a Sam Kinison routine.
“Women!” he’d rant, tossing his hair over his shoulder, stalking the stage like a small, rotund, beret-wearing trapped animal. “Tell us what you want! Why,” he’d say, and drop to one knee, beseeching, “why is it so HARD to say YES, right THERE, that’s GOOD, or NO, not THAT. TELL US WHAT YOU WANT!” he’d shriek, as the audience erupted, “WE’LL DO IT!”
We laughed without knowing precisely what made this so hysterical. What could be so hard? we wondered. Sex, insofar as we’d experienced it, did not involve much mystery. Lather, rinse, repeat. That was our repertoire. No fuss, no muss, and certainly no confusion.
When C. parted her legs and then parted herself with her fingertips…
Oh… my… God, I thought. It was as if he’d shoved a mirror between my legs and broadcasted the image to the whole world. I swallowed hard and kept reading.
… I felt a sudden and complete sympathy with every man who’d ever pumped his fist to Kinison’s lament. It was like looking at a face with no features, was the best thing I could think.
