Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

“Really… intense .”

“Oh my God , and she’s so fucking hot .”

“She is , right?”

“ So hot, Rissa.”

“She’s young .”

“Not that young.”

“Young enough . Does that mean I get a Cougar Town zip code now?”

“There goes the neighborhood. So tell me, tell me, tell me : how did it start ? Did you call her?”

“ She called me . Apparently, she needed someone to talk to.”

“Slurp slurp slurp.”

“Stop that!” said Larissa, swatting her.

“And now you have her thinking that you’re sleeping with Dusty?”

“I don’t even know why I started that, Tess, it’s crazy . And last night I was up at, like, four a.m.? Watching Dangerous Liaisons ? On Netflix? Which is kind of what I suddenly realized I was doing . Have you seen that?”

“Dangerous what ?”

“Liaisons. Glenn Close is so genius.”

“Is it, like, about a ménage à foie gras ?”

“ God , you’re fuckin’ funny.”

“’Cause that would totally make an amazing friggin’ movie, right? The Star … the Wife … and the Camera Double —oh my God, Rissa ! You need to start writing right now .”

“… I guess I’d feel worse about everything if — it’s not like I held a gun to her head. ’Cause she’s the one who called, right? And I know Allegra’s playing the payback game, so I guess I’m kinda being used. Again! —”

Tessa drunkenly sang, “ Girl, you just keep on using me … till ya use me up —” while Larissa continued her experimental hyperloop train of thought.

“—Allegra’s really sweet and vulnerable and I know that Queen Wilding treats her like shit .”

“Well, duh. It’s all about who got duh power, honey.”

“And I don’t even know anymore why I got so pissed —”

“Because Star Whore took a steaming dump on you and that never feels good. Though maybe it does ! Hairy Man would prob’ly know.”

“I mean, it was just a fling with a movie star , and it was fun —”

“Until it wasn’t.”

“Because hey, you know what? I’m a big girl. I can do a one-nighter. Like, no problem! I can be the whatever who saves your marriage and I can be the whatever who blows it up . I can be whatever you want me to be, whatever you need . I can do it all , but just, like, treat me with respect . Treat me like a human being, okay? Right? You know, like, don’t make me feel frickin’ used . And I probably should’ve known better. I guess I got sucked in. You know, the lifestyle sucks you in every time.”

“Dusty Wilding is a cold fucking cunt.”

“She is, right? It was, like, abusive . And I think I am going to write something about it—”

“Yass!” said Tessa, with a fist pump. “I told you, Riss, anyone would publish that. You could get serious magazine money from a — even maybe, like, Vanity Fair . Oh my God, Vanity Fair ! Like, it doesn’t have to be The Star or a shitty tabloid. Payback is a motherfucker. You got laid , now get paid .”

“No, I don’t want to do that. And nothing online. I’m thinking of something so much cooler —like a novel, like a Fifty Shades of Grey . Or even classier , like a Dangerous Liaisons , which I Googled by the way and which happens to actually have been a ‘pistol’ novel written in 1782 . You can totally steal from novels written centuries ago. All the copyrights have totally expired.”

“Oh my God, Fifty Shades of Grey made a billion dollars .”

“I could sell it to publishers as a roman à clef .”

“A what?”

“It’s French, for a novel based on real people.”

“I love it! A reality-show novel!”

“But without — I wouldn’t necessarily have to come out and say who the real people are . You hire publicists to kind of spread the word.”

“But your name’s on it, right? Like, written by you?”

“I don’t know… I think maybe ‘Written by Anonymous.’”

“Larissa, you can’t , you have to put your name on it. You can leave theirs out — even though I think that’d be a huge mistake —but it has to have your name on it. ‘Le Ménage à Twat , by Larissa Dunnick ’ has to be in huge letters on the cover!”

“Mais non , cheri…”

“But why? Otherwise people won’t know you wrote it —”

“I don’t even know where this is going , contessa.”

“Did you just call me a cunt?”

“It totally may not be going anywhere . I’m just making it up as I go along.”

“But that’s what a novel is. That’s what novelists do, they make shit up .”

“All I know is, I’m just gonna do whatever I have to, to maybe come out of everything with a book. And right now, it’s weird but it’s fun .”

Tessa begged to hear more but Larissa wanted to talk about Mister Billion instead.

“What’s going on with you two, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” said Tessa. “I think I’m kinda over it. He says he wants to take me to Turks and Caicos. I call it Kikes and Jerk-offs… he has this boat . Or says he has a boat. So far, all I’ve seen are fucking pictures . On Instagram . He takes more pictures of that boat than he does of his dick. Whatever.”

“Turks and Caicos on a private yacht sounds kinda awesome.”

“Fuckin’ hate me a boat, Riss. But if you’re very good , I might tell you something I did that was naughty .”

“Oh my God, you better —after what I told you ? You owe me like a motherfucka!”

Tessa slowly finished her wine (she’d been drinking on top of the Xanax) then scofflawed an American Spirit. Larissa snatched it from her lip and hissed it out in a glass of Perrier.

“Now fess the fuck up .”

“He paid me for anal. Paid. Twice. No — three times.”

“No shit.”

“Pun intended. ’Cause I made sure I was clean as a whistle.”

“Did you ever do that before?”

“Ever do anal? Or ever get paid for it?”

“Both.”

“I have. Done it. But only a handful. Assful? Never got paid for it though. Not exactly .”

“How much did he give you?”

“Five thousand.”

“Whoa! Each time?”

“Yup.”

“Nice!”

“It started as a goof. Like, he kept talking and talking about it? Kind of pressuring me? And girl, you know Tessa don’t like bein’ pressured . And I think he thought I’d like just keep saying no… like, I’d be all Betty Ford— Just Say No! — the Betty Ford of anal. Or was that Nancy Ray-gun. But maybe he was gettin’ off on me saying no. So when I finally said, ‘For ten grand , you can wear it like a turtleneck,’ it was sorta like he was up shit’s creek and I finally handed him a paddle.”

“I thought you said five though. That he gave you five. Was it ten each or five each?”