Jessica Chiarella - And Again

“That’s not a problem,” Harry chimes in. “Right, sweets?”

I bare my teeth at his pet name, the name he calls all the girls, and I want to call him out for being the overpriced pimp that he is, but instead I nod. “Of course, it’s not a problem,” I reply. “I’ve got no reason to be bashful.”

Jay grins. Harry grins. I pretend to drink my martini. The food arrives and it’s fancy shit, stacked up like tiny sculptures on huge white plates. All of it tastes strange, too strong, its spices and sauces and textures sharp and overpowering. Jay and Harry dig in. I wonder if the waiter would bring me some macaroni and cheese if I asked really nicely. If I smiled at him, flashed my eyes in that way men like. I know all of the things that men like by now, and how they relate to me. Men like the way I sway my hips when I walk. Men like it when I bite my bottom lip, particularly when I’m wearing red lipstick. Men like it when I pretend I’m not interested. I shrug at Jay.

“You think this is the sort of movie to break back into the business with? It all sounds a little overdone.”

“I think this movie will show that you’re willing to take risks,” Jay replies. “Get your face in the theaters. Maybe some international exposure. I think you try to relaunch your career any other way, and you’re just wasting your time.”

“Makes sense to me,” Harry says.

Jay glances at my plate, which is nearly untouched. “You don’t like the fish?”

“I’m picky,” I reply. A sly smile spreads across his face. His teeth are peroxide-white, so white my own teeth begin to ache just looking at them.

“Of course you are,” he replies.

We end up in his hotel room. Of course, we end up in his hotel room. This is how these things work. This is how I remember it. Harry left us at the restaurant, claiming he had some emergency appointment with another one of his actresses, the way he always played us against each other, keeping us on edge, constantly currying for his favor. I’m too old to play those games now. But then Jay has a town car waiting downstairs, and I’m pretty sure my mother had a rule against refusing rides from powerful men when they’re offered. So we end up in his hotel room.

I remember this. I’m pretty sure I’ve slept with Jay already for a part, back in the day, back when his name had something to do with rotting flesh. It’s kind of hard to keep track. He pours us each a drink.

“I can’t believe you go out in public wearing that,” he says, handing me a crystal glass. The hotel room is expensive, with towering views of the city around us. He really has arrived, our little John.

I glance down at myself. I’m covered from knees to shoulders, but I know what he means, though I pretend I don’t. “Wearing what?”

“Anything but a burka,” he replies, downing his drink. “It should be illegal. You could cause car accidents. Plane crashes. Mass hysteria.”

“You always did have a talent for exaggeration,” I reply, touching my lips to the glass, leaving a bloody mark on the crystal rim. This is going to be a lot more difficult without the benefit of inebriation.

“Stay here in L.A.,” he says. “What are you doing, hiding out in Chicago?”

“I like it,” I reply. “There’s no artifice there. Chicago suits me.”

“Chicago is small potatoes. Christ, you might as well be living in Shitsburg, for all the exposure you’ll get there.”

“Not if you have anything to do with it,” I say, and he smiles, stepping closer to me.

“You know, there were a lot of rumors about why you dropped off the planet for a while.”

“What sort of rumors?” I ask, playing coy, though I know where this conversation is heading. It is, I suspect, the same reason Harry has backed off so easily at my rebuffs for the past few months. No one is sure what my status is anymore.

“Some of the girls from the Pines said you were sick.”

I look him square in the eye, because there can be no question of this, not if I ever want my career back. “Do I look sick to you?” I ask, and smile with each and every one of my teeth.

Apparently it’s all the answer he needs, because he leans in then, his mouth closing over mine. He tastes sour. I set the glass down on the side table, leaning into him as he loops a hand around my waist. I can feel the damp heat of his palm through my blouse, and I imagine oily handprints on my clothes.

I think of how I was back then, that little girl, wide-eyed and straight off the plane in Los Angeles, shedding her trailer park clothes for men who promised her fame and fortune, her face up on billboards above Hollywood Boulevard, every camera turned in her direction. How easy it had been, in that body, the one that already felt tarnished at nineteen. The one that didn’t feel quite like it belonged to me. It was easy to loan it out, to give it away. This body, however, has not yet become a mere tool for someone else’s satisfaction. I have not yet wrought a value from it, weighed and measured its worth in trade. I have not yet put it to work.

I have no desire for Jay, in his expensive suit, with his slicked-back hair and fake tan. I can’t even rummage around inside myself and find a shadow of interest, something to pull me through to the other side, the shape of his hands or the scrape of his stubble or any of the other things that would set me shivering, were Jay another man. But no. I’ve learned long ago that the most difficult battle is trying to make yourself want something. It’s easy to learn to love, or to hate, or envy, or even forgive. You can teach those things, you can learn them. But desire is that most elusive of birds, perched in the high branches of the tallest tree, ready to take flight with the smallest provocation. There is no snaring it, no coaxing it down. And I’m no longer sure if I can make love to a man without it.

Jay tries to hold on to me as I twist away, as if one moment more will shred my resolve and have me tumbling into him.

“What?” Jay says, his eyes still heavy-lidded and unfocused.

“I’m going to go.” I remove his hands from my waist. And then, because I have nothing to lose, “I guess you can contact Harry about sending that script.” He smiles, and I know that the dream of that indie film has evaporated as well.

“I’ll send him the script if you stay.”

It’s my turn to smile now, and I’m not sure if it completely hides my disdain for him. “My price is much higher than that, Jack.”

“All right,” he says, “I’ll give you the part if you stay. I’ll give you whatever you want.” He steps toward me, brushes the backs of his fingers down the column of my throat. And just like that, it appears. That little seed of wanting. It is the wanting of anonymous sex in public bathrooms, of faceless bodies on a dance floor, of disembodied voices on the other end of a telephone. It is a human wanting, so human it is too shameful to be acknowledged. A desire that can only exist alongside revulsion.

He screws me up against the wall. Facing the wall, my cheek pressed against the beige hotel paint. It hurts just a bit more than I imagine it would if I’d already taken this body out for a spin. All of the blood drops from my head when he comes, and my knees go weak. I don’t fall, he has me pinned, but he slips an arm around my waist and it reminds me of how my mother would hold me when I was a child, getting sick over the rim of the toilet. How I hate that arm, hate needing it to steady me.

The whole messy affair is so much like what I remember of sex. I thought it might be different in a different body, in this more perfect body. But there is that same sense of relief when he finishes, a curtain falling on a great performance. Though I don’t care about this man, don’t care about what he has to offer me, I care that I have been perfect for him. It is the greatest bit of sadness for me, the realization that still, even now, no one cares less about my own pleasure than me. I only care about how I appear to him, ever-beautiful, ever-willing. The stuff of fantasy. I wonder, as he holds me there, if I am real at all.