When men begin serious talk, beauties are left to themselves.
“How long have you been divorced?” suggests the wish to resume a prior conversation.
“A few months,” when untrue, should be uttered without eye contact.
“What was he like, your husband?” may be answered honestly.
“From Africa. Kenya” will satisfy your wish to talk about your husband.
“Black?,” with eyebrows raised, may indicate racism.
“Yes. Black,” in measured tones, should deliver a gentle reprimand.
“How black?” suggests that it did not.
“Very black” is somewhat less gentle, especially when accompanied by a pointed stare.
“Nice” hints at personal experience.
“Yes. It is nice” contradicts one’s alleged divorce. “Was nice” is a reasonable correction.
“But not nice enough?,” with laughter, indicates friendly intimacy. Especially when followed by “Or too nice!”
House-party hosts are universally eager to make guests eat.
For most beauties, the lure of food is a hazard; as a beauty of limited tenure, you may eat what you want.
Squab can be consumed by ripping the bird apart with your hands and sucking the meat from the bones.
A stunned expression reveals that your host expected the use of utensils.
A host who caters to violent guests will understand implicitly the need for discretion.
The adjacency of your host’s chair to your own may presage a confidence.
If your job is to appear simpleminded, a confidence may mean that you have failed.
Everyone should brush his teeth before dinner.
Turning your ear toward your host’s mouth will prevent you from having to smell the breath coming from it.
Ears must be kept clean at all times.
If your host warns you that your Designated Mate may pose an immediate danger to you, assume that your Designated Mate has left the room.
Going to the rest room is the most efficient means of self-jettisoning.
Never betray urgency, not even in an empty hallway.
If you have no idea in which direction your Designated Mate has gone, hold still.
If you find yourself hovering beside a pair of glass doors, you may open them and step outside.
Nights in the South of France are a strange, dark, piercing blue.
A bright moon can astonish, no matter how many times you have seen it.
If you were a child who loved the moon, looking at the moon will forever remind you of childhood.
Fatherless girls may invest the moon with a certain paternal promise.
Everyone has a father.
A vague story like “Your father died before you were born” may satisfy a curious child for an unlikely number of years.
The truth of your paternity, discovered in adulthood, will make the lie seem retroactively ludicrous.
Publicists occasionally have flings with their movie-star clients.
Discovering that you are a movie star’s daughter is not necessarily a comfort.
It is especially not a comfort when the star in question has seven other children from three different marriages.
Discovering that you are a movie star’s daughter may prompt you to watch upward of sixty movies, dating from the beginning of his career.
You may think, watching said movies, You don’t know about me, but I am here.
You may think, watching said movies, I’m invisible to you, but I am here.
A sudden reconfiguration of your past can change the fit and feel of your adulthood.
It may cleave you, irreparably, from the mother whose single goal has been your happiness.
If your husband has transformed greatly in his own life, he will understand your transformation.
Avoid excessive self-reflection; your job is to look out, not in.
“There you are,” whispered from behind by your Designated Mate, suggests that he has been looking for you.
Holding still can sometimes prove more effective than actively searching.
“Come,” uttered softly, may communicate a renewed wish for intimate contact.
The moon’s calm face can make you feel, in advance, that you are understood and forgiven.
The sea is audible against the rocks well before you see it.
Even at night, the Mediterranean is more blue than black.
If you wish to avoid physical intimacy, the sight of a speedboat will bring relief, despite the myriad new problems it presents.
If no words are exchanged between your Designated Mate and the speedboat’s captain, their meeting was likely prearranged.
A man known for his cruelty may still show great care in guiding his beauty into a rocking speedboat.
He may interpret her hesitation to board as a fear of falling in.
Resist the impulse to ask where you are going.
Try, when anxious, to summon up a goofy giggle.
Locate your Personal Calming Source and use it.
If your Personal Calming Source is the moon, be grateful that it is dark and that the moon is especially bright.
Reflect on the many reasons you can’t yet die:
You need to see your husband.
You need to have children.
You need to tell the movie star that he has an eighth child, and that she is a hero.
The moon may appear to move, but really it is you who are moving.
At high velocity, a speedboat slams along the tops of waves.
Fear and excitement are sometimes indistinguishable.
When the captain of a boat adjusts his course in response to commands from your Designated Mate, he may not know where he is taking you.
If your Designated Mate keeps looking up, he’s probably using the stars for navigation.
The Mediterranean is vast enough to have once seemed infinite.
A beauty should require no more context than the presence of her Designated Mate.
A beauty must appear to enjoy any journey he initiates.
Simulate said enjoyment by putting an affectionate arm around him and nestling your head close to his.
A beauty whose head is aligned with her Designated Mate’s can share in his navigation and thus calculate the route.
At night, far from shore, stars pulse with a strength that is impossible to conceive of in the proximity of light.
Your whereabouts will never be a mystery; you will be visible at all times as a dot of light on the screens of those watching over you.
You are one of hundreds, each a potential hero.
Technology has afforded ordinary people a chance to glow in the cosmos of human achievement.
Your lack of espionage and language training is what makes your record clean and neutral.
You are an ordinary person undertaking an extraordinary task.
You need not be remarkable for your credentials or skill sets, only for your bravery and equilibrium.
Knowing that you are one of hundreds shouldn’t feel belittling.
In the new heroism, the goal is to merge with something larger than yourself.
In the new heroism, the goal is to throw off generations of self-involvement.
In the new heroism, the goal is to renounce the American fixation with being seen and recognized.
In the new heroism, the goal is to dig beneath your shiny persona.
You’ll be surprised by what lies under it: a rich, deep crawl space of possibilities.
Some liken this discovery to a dream in which a familiar home acquires new wings and rooms.
The power of individual magnetism is nothing against the power of combined selfless effort.
You may accomplish astonishing personal feats, but citizen agents rarely seek individual credit.