“Hold up. Wait. You saying you a virgin?”
No. You never said that.
“So this a religious thing.”
You never said that either, but it was easier just to nod your head and go for the simple story. You looked away. You cried. You apologized for being so stupid. But then his hand clasped your shoulder, and he gently turned you around. Suddenly he was more sober than you’d ever seen him before.
“Hey, it’s all cool,” he assured you. “It ain’t about that.”
You wiped your eyes. Really?
“I swear,” he said. “I just wanted to, you know, be with you. There are lots of ways I can be with you. Shit, we could lie down and talk. I don’t care. Right now I just want to be with someone who ain’t using me or judging me. Look, just hide out with me. Just for a little while. Please?”
Once again he managed to extinguish all your fears. Right there in the hallway, he held you close and stroked your hair. As you nuzzled against his strong chest, you thought you’d found a true prince indeed. You teased yourself with a sudden crazy vision of the future, one in which he leaves that shrew wife of his, marries you, and takes you all around the world. You compiled a list of things you would do with him in that hotel room, being the sweet guy he is and looking the way he does. Jesus. You’re only human.
At 10:45, in Room 1215, you and Jeremy kissed. You kicked off your pointy elf shoes. You fell into the bed. You began to walk him through your list. It was a good list.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for Jeremy. He was still drunk. Still stoned. Still strong. As soon as you felt what he was doing—
“Stop. Please.”
________________
On Tuesday, it became officiaclass="underline" I wasn’t going to heaven.
At 11 a.m., I pulled the car over on Ocean Park Boulevard, in Santa Monica. I had taken Harmony on a long and winding trek from her apartment in Venice to the downtown L.A. skyline, through the wide and airy streets of Pasadena, and then all the way back to the shore. The real journey was happening inside the car, as I walked her through a dark and stormy narrative. For the most part, she listened well. It wasn’t until the last few details that she turned to face the window. She didn’t make a sound. I didn’t even realize she was crying until she asked me to stop.
“I didn’t mean stop the car,” she said. “I just meant stop talking.”
“You want me to keep driving?”
“Yeah.”
I put us back on the road. I didn’t want to coach her in public for this very reason. There was simply no way I could feed her her story with out opening up old wounds.
Still, this was a bold new low for me. At that moment I was able to float outside my body, through the fourth wall, and into the seated audience that was watching the movie version of this. I could look around and see the bitter expressions they leveled at the big-screen me. I was the asshole, the villain of the story. And no matter what I did or said, no matter how good my intentions were, the audience wouldn’t be happy until I got my comeuppance, hopefully at Harmony’s hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and left it at that.
Eventually, she swapped her Kleenex for a Pall Mall, then punched in my car’s cigarette lighter. By the time it popped back out, she had regained herself.
“He didn’t do none of that shit,” she said, lighting up.
“I know.”
“He didn’t even know who the hell I was. He walked right by me. A couple times. Went straight to the couch with some other woman.”
I knew that too.
“I can’t tell what’s crazier,” she added. “The fact that you’re doing this to him or the fact that he’s paying you to do this to him.”
At the moment, I was more concerned with what I was doing to her. As soon as the coast was clear, I made a sharp U-turn.
Harmony clutched her door handle. “Whoa. What you doing?”
Distracting you. “Taking you to the airport.”
“Why?”
“Because this is hard work. We need a vacation. You and I need to get out of this city.”
She laughed smoke at me. “Shut up.”
“I’m serious. I’ll pay for the whole thing. Where do you want to go? Paris? London? Rome?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Why am I crazy?”
“For starters, what makes you think I want to go anywhere with you?”
“All right,” I said with feigned umbrage. “If that’s the way you feel about it, we’ll take separate trips. I’m going to Madrid. What’s your pleasure?”
“Forget it.”
“Come on. If you could go anywhere, where would it be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fine,” I declared. “I’ll just give you my American Express card. You can go wherever you want. Just make sure to come back by the twelfth.”
Harmony crossed her arms and eyed me. I caught her gaze. “What?”
“You ain’t serious about this.”
“No.”
She rolled her eyes. “I figured you was just teasing me.”
“Hey, the only thing I’m teasing you with is your future.”
“My future,” she parroted skeptically.
“Your near future. When this is all over and you get your advance money from the book deal, the movie rights, and all that, you’re going to go to LAX. You’re going to buy a whole book of plane tickets, and then you’re going to hit every corner of the world. How does that sound?”
I was sure it sounded great, but judging from her dour expression, Harmony wasn’t in the mood for the soft sell. I toned down my zeal.
“Look, I don’t expect you to believe me, hon, but there’ll be a point when this whole crazy whirlwind comes and goes and you’ll see that you’re still standing. You’ll see all these great opportunities you’ve never had before, just lying at your feet. And that’s when you’ll realize that all this hard work, all this drama, all this time with me, was actually worth it. I promise.
“Until then,” I added with a shrug, “I don’t know. If it helps, just try to picture the world. Because I’m going to put you all over it. Even if I have to drive you myself.”
If I affected her, she didn’t show it. She continued to stare out the window between wisps of her smoke. After a few miles of silence, I brought us onto the 405 South.
“We still going to the airport?” she asked.
“If you want to, sure.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind. I never been there. I lived in Inglewood almost my whole life and I ain’t never been to the airport.”
“Your wish is my command.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her loosen up. I shouldn’t baby her so much. She was strong. Much stronger than me. If I had suffered even a fraction of her ordeals, I’d be broken china. Useless. No wonder the audience liked her better. I liked her better.
She threw out her cigarette, grabbed a new one, then punched in my lighter. By the time it popped back out, she was ready to work.
“So after the Christmas party, what did I do?”
________________
“Obviously, she wouldn’t go to the police,” I’d said, sixteen hours earlier. “Not after what they put her through.”
From the driver’s seat, Doug concurred. “That’s good. People will buy that.”
If they ever handed out awards for national media hoaxes (call them the Shammys), and I won for the Harmony Prince story, the very first person I’d thank at the podium would be Doug Modine. He picked up the slack everywhere I dropped it. I’d spent so much energy casting, courting, and grooming Harmony that I had barely spent an ounce of thought on who we’d get to play her lawyer.