you wanted to appear in one quality movie a year, and raise your children in a country farmhouse.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You read that?”
“I’ve read everything about you,” I told her.
“Lies. All lies,” she said, almost cheerfully. “Today, for example. I’m to go to some place called Mooma…”
“Moomba,” I corrected.
“… and have drinks with Matt Damon, or Ben Affleck. Or maybe both. And we’re supposed to look very secretive and lovey, and somebody’s going to call Page 6, and we’re to be photographed, and then we’re going to go to some restaurant that probably paid April off to have dinner, except of course I can’t actually have dinner, because, God forbid, I ever get photographed with something actually in my mouth, or with my mouth open, or basically in any manner that could give any suggestion that I ever do anything with my mouth besides kiss men…”
“… and smoke.”
“Not that, either. The cancer lobby, you know. Which is how I got away from April. Told her I needed a cig.”
“So you really want to pass up drinks and dinner with Ben… or Matt”
“Oh, it doesn’t stop there. Then I’m supposed to be seen out dancing at some bar with pigs in its name…”
“Hogs and Heifers?”
“That’s it. Dancing there till some ungodly hour, and then, and only then, am I permitted some sleep. And that’s after I take off my brassiere and dance on the bar while I’m twirling it over my head.”
“Wow. They really, um, arrange all that for you?”
She pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket. Sure enough: 4 P.M., Moomba; 7 P.M., Tandoor; 11 -?, Hogs and Heifers. She reached into another pocket and produced a very small black lace Wonderbra. She wrapped the Wonderbra around her hand and started swinging it around her head while pumping her hips in a parody of a party girl’s bump and grind. “See,” she said, “they even made me practice. If it was up to me I’d sleep all day…”
“Me, too. And watch Iron Chef.”
Maxi looked puzzled. “What’s that?”
“Spoken like someone who’s never been home alone on a Friday night. It’s this TV show where there’s this reclusive millionaire, and he’s got these three chefs…”
“The Iron Chefs,” Maxi guessed.
“Right. And every week they have cooking battles with some challenger chef who comes in, and the eccentric millionaire gives them a theme ingredient that they have to cook with, and half the time it’s something that starts off alive, like squid or giant eel…”
Maxi was smiling, and nodding, and looking like she couldn’t wait to see the first episode. Or maybe she was just acting, I reminded myself. That was, after all, her job. Maybe she acted this excited and friendly and, well, nice, every time she met someone new, and then forgot they’d ever existed as soon as she moved on to the next movie.
“It’s fun,” I concluded. “Also free. Cheaper than renting a movie. I taped it last night, and I’m going to watch it when I get home.”
“I’m never home on Fridays or Saturdays,” she said sadly.
“Well, I almost always am. Believe me, you’re not missing much.”
Maxi Ryder grinned at me. “Cannie,” she said, “know what I really want to do?”
And that was how I wound up in the Bliss day spa, naked on my belly, next to one of the most acclaimed young movie stars of my generation, talking about my failed love life while a man named Ricardo slathered Active Green Clay Mud all over my back.
Maxi and I had slipped out a back door of the hotel and caught a cab to the spa, where the receptionist very snippily informed us that they were booked all day, were booked for weeks, in fact, until Maxi slipped off her sunglasses and made about three seconds’ worth of significant eye contact and the service improved by about 3,000 percent.
“This is so great,” I told her, for about the fifth time. And it really was. The bed was cushioned with about half a dozen towels, and each one of them was easily as thick as my comforter. Soothing music played so softly in the background I thought it was a CD, until I’d opened my eyes long enough to see that there was an actual woman with an actual harp in the corner, half-hidden behind a lacy billow of curtains.
Maxi nodded. “Wait until they start with the showers and the salt rub.” She closed her eyes. “I’m so tired,” she murmured. “All I want to do is sleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” I told her. “I mean, I start, but then I wake up…”
“… and the bed’s so empty.”
“Well, I actually have a little dog, so the bed isn’t empty.”
“Oh, I’d love a dog! But I can’t. Too much travel.”
“You can come hang out with Nifkin any time,” I said, knowing that it was highly unlikely that Maxi would be dropping by for an iced cappuccino and a frolic in the dog-crap-studded South Philadelphia dog park. Then again, I reasoned, as Ricardo gently rolled me over and started smearing my front, this was pretty unlikely, too.
“So what’s next?” I asked. “Are you blowing off your entire agenda?”
“I think I am,” she said. “I just want one day and one night to live like a normal person.”
This hardly seemed like to the time to point out that normal people did not get to drop a thousand dollars on a single trip to a spa.
“What else do you want to do?”
Maxi considered. “I don’t know. It’s been so long… what would you do if you had a day to kill in New York?”
“Am I me in this scenario, or am I you?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, do I have unlimited resources and recognition issues, or am I just plain old me?”
“Let’s do plain old you first.”
“Hmm. Well, I’d go to the ticket outlet in Times Square and try to get a half-price ticket for a Broadway show tonight. Then I’d go to the Steve Madden store in Chelsea and see what was on sale. And I’d look in all the galleries, and I’d buy six-for-a-dollar barrettes at the flea market on Columbus, and I’d have dinner at Virgil’s, and go to the show.”
“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.”
