A WEEK LATER AROUND NOON, JULIAN AND RILEY WALKED out of his gym together. She was draped around his arm, and they were laughing at some private joke. Mirabelle was waiting for him near his convertible. Julian didn’t want his shoulders to slump when he saw her, but he couldn’t help himself. The heaviness he felt every time his heart said her name would not lift. It was like fog with cement in it.
“I’ll see you later, Riles,” he said, leaning in to kiss Riley’s cheek. “I gotta . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, you gotta,” she said, kissing him back with a smile. “Don’t forget to gargle with coconut oil when you shower. It’s called pulling.”
“Oh, to be sure, my next stop will be for some coconut oil.”
“It should be,” Riley said. “Coconut oil has many uses. Teeth whitener. Skin moisturizer. Personal lubricant.”
“Shut up,” he said, poking Riley in the ribs, and walking up to Mirabelle.
She wore a silky floral wraparound dress, high heels, red lips. Skimming the length of her thighs, the dress fit like a second skin over her narrow waist, her slim round hips. The neckline ended in a deep v between her breasts.
“Hey,” she said. She wasn’t smiling or bubbly.
“Hey.” Julian waved to Riley who honked as she drove off.
“Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up?” He stared at the pavement.
“I mean . . . can we go sit down somewhere?”
Trying not to sigh, he took out his keys. “You want to grab a cup of coffee? I have a few minutes. Are you hungry?”
They went to the Griddle Café on Sunset and sat at a table on the sidewalk, across from the Laugh Factory and down the street from the white Chateau Marmont rising on a hill over Sunset. At first they avoided any real conversation by discussing the merits of red velvet pancakes and The Golden Ticket—banana nana originals for the dreamers of dreams.
When the food came, Mirabelle fiddled with her undrunk coffee, stabbed her pancakes with a fork and didn’t eat. “Look, I understand you don’t want to be with me,” she said. “You’ve made that pretty clear. I get it. And I’m okay with it. Really. It’s for the best, anyway, because I auditioned for that London part I was telling you about, and I have a really good feeling about it. So I’m not going to be around much longer.”
Julian winced.
“But I need you to explain to me what I did,” she said. “This isn’t kind. I need to know, so that next time, like when I’m in London, and I meet someone else, I don’t do the same thing or will at least try to do things differently. If I can work on it, I want to.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” Julian said.
“I thought you and I had something.”
It was Julian’s turn to stab his food with a fork. Of course, at that moment, the waiter came over to ask if everything was all right with their food, since after all, it was the Griddle Café! and they hadn’t taken a single bite. To get him to leave them alone, they nibbled on their food mindlessly.
“You don’t think we had something?”
“Maybe. I guess,” he replied with as casual a shrug as he could muster. “The timing’s just off.”
“Why? Are you engaged to someone else?”
“No.” He and Gwen kept talking on the phone, but they both knew it was over.
“Because I’m not. That guy I wrote you about before, he’s old news. I’ve gone out with a couple of guys since, but nothing serious. I live with Z, honest.”
“I believe you,” Julian said. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“So what is it, then?” she said. “Is it because I’m broke? I’ll make more. I’m always working. I’m a hard worker. I go on a dozen auditions a week. I’m always trying. You said yourself trying again is the important thing. I’ll get there.”
“I know you will, and what do I care about your money?” For some reason he cringed at that, too. What was with him?
“Is it because I’m an actress? Some people don’t like to date actresses. Is that it? Because you think we’re selfish, always me, me, me?”
“No.”
“Performing has been my whole life, ever since I was a kid working with my dad. I can’t explain it. It’s in my blood.”
“You don’t have to explain it.”
“It’s not because I don’t drive, is it? I failed my test last year, but I’ve signed up for lessons again. I’ll get my license.”
“No.”
“So what is it? Don’t make me play twenty questions. Just tell me.”
Julian didn’t know why his soul filled up with such unrelenting horrors. He was sure it had everything to do with her. “Something happened to me when we were up in the mountains—”
“I knew it!” Mirabelle exclaimed. “You hate that new age mumbo-jumbo.”
“That’s not it.”
“Z warned me not to take you there, and I didn’t listen!”
Reaching out, Julian took her hand. “Mia,” he said, squeezing her lightly, “you keep guessing, but let me finish. Let me tell you what you asked me to tell you.”
She fell quiet but would not let him release her hand. He couldn’t hold on to her and tell her what he was about to tell her. The expression in her eyes—vulnerable, full of yearning, in a teary communion with him—was making him incoherent. He pulled away. Her eyes welled up.
“When we were up in the mountains,” Julian said, “I saw things that I didn’t want to see, that I wish to God I had not seen. It made me feel so bad, it hurt me so deeply that I still haven’t recovered. I wanted to wait to call you until after I’ve calmed down. The trouble is . . .” He paused. He knew she wasn’t going to take the next part well. “Not only have I not calmed down, I’ve gotten worse. What I briefly felt in the mountains has spilled over into my nightmares. I can’t sleep anymore. I’m a zombie during the day. Ashton is ready to pack up and move. He says I’m ruining his life, too.”
“But how is that my fault? I didn’t do that.”
“Because every time I so much as think your name, Mirabelle,” Julian said intensely, “I feel such crushing despair that it makes it nearly impossible for me to live my life. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. But I need to get away from you, not get nearer. Otherwise I’m going to lose my mind.”
She started to cry.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking out a pack of tissues from his jacket pocket and handing them to her.
“Aren’t you the hero, carrying around tissues in case somebody cries.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Trust me, I can’t be any good to you like this.”
“Who says I want you to be good to me?”
“Come on . . .”
With shaking hands, she put on her sunglasses. He put on his. They still stared at each other but now through black barricades.
“You asked me to be honest,” he said.
“Yes, and thank you very much.” Her lip quivered.
“You’re a nice girl.” Very nice. “Any guy would be lucky to call you his.”
“You mean any other guy.”
“Yes,” Julian said. “That’s what I mean.”
“But I don’t want another guy to call me his,” Mirabelle whispered.
“Are you not listening to me?”
She rummaged through her bag and pulled out the crystal necklace. At the sight of it, Julian flinched as if she had hit him across the face with it. “Do you remember this?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” Julian replied, looking down into his plate. “I keep seeing it in my nightmares, exploding like a tactical nuke, its shards slicing up everyone I care about until we all bleed to death.”
Gasping, Mirabelle stood from the table, marched across the short sidewalk to the curb on Sunset, and flung the crystal quartz into the storm drain. It dinged when it hit bottom. She came back to her seat. “It’s been in my family since the Second World War,” she said. “But I don’t care about the stone. I’m sorry I ever showed it to you. What happened to you up there has never happened to me. I stand inside a festival of color and I make wishes, that’s all. It’s harmless fun. I thought you and I could make a wish together. I didn’t know it was going to be so upsetting, honest.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“But thank you for telling me,” she said. “Because now I won’t make the same mistake with some other poor schmuck who might be into me. I was trying to entice you, not drive you away.”
“I know.” Julian’s gaze was turned to the street. He couldn’t take his eyes off the grate through which the crystal had fallen. It’s like the stone had a life of its own. He was going to be picturing the quartz in that storm drain for the rest of his life. The crystal lying there, eventually splintering apart, the glass ashes melting into the water table, rising up with the wind, being carried through the air, forever infusing the earth and the plants and the fruit and the atoms of all living things with its great and terrible power.
Not looking at each other, they sat stabbing their pancakes until they were dead.
“Do you want to tell me about your dreams?” she said.
“Absolutely not.”
“Sometimes talking helps.”
“This is not one of those times.”
“Why?” she said with a sniffly chuckle. “Are they about me?”
He didn’t look up.
“Wait,” Mirabelle said. “Your dreams are about me?”
“Not like that.”
“Julian, can you please look at me?”
He looked but he was hiding behind his shades.
“You dream about me?”
“Not like that.” Though sometimes like that, too. Not often enough.
“Like what?” Her soft breathy voice lowered a notch, the tempo of her words slowed.
“It’s nothing good.” Though sometimes it was.
“But just so I’m clear—you see me at night in your bed when you take off your clothes and go to sleep?”
“Nothing good, Mirabelle.”
“You dream of me,” she said, relaxing slightly. “Not about that tall blonde supermodel you left the gym with.”
“Who, Riley? She’s Ashton’s girlfriend. No, I dream about her, too,” Julian said.
“Does your best friend know you’re seeing his girl on the side and dreaming of her?”
Julian almost laughed. “I’m not seeing her on the side. She’s my friend.”
“Do all your female friends look like her?”
“No. Just her.” Behind the sunglasses, his eyes twinkled lightly. If this was a normal brunch, they would have twinkled long ago. There would’ve been teasing and flirting and joking. “She likes to watch me box.”
“I bet,” said Mirabelle.
“She thinks she’s my life coach. She gives me health tips.”
“I have a health tip for you,” Mirabelle said, leaning forward. “Smiling for sixty seconds triggers the serotonin in your brain and makes you feel better. Even if you’re in a crap mood and don’t want to smile, it still makes you feel better.”
“Huh.”
“Try it now. Like this.” She took off her sunglasses, wiped her eyes, and shined her shining shine on him.
He grimaced.
“Not good, Jules,” Mirabelle said. “Not good at all.” She sat quietly, pondering something. He motioned for the check. But she shooed the waiter away after asking for some fresh coffee and a chocolate shake, and continued to sit, still mulling, still thinking.
“Mia, I gotta go—”
“So here’s my question,” she said, interrupting him. “How do you know your dreams won’t stop as soon as you take me to dinner?”
“Why would they stop if I took you to dinner?”
“Why would they not?”
“You think dreams can be bribed?”
“I don’t know how dreams work, I’m not Freud,” she said. “But how do you know it’s not your suppressed desire to take me to a movie and dinner that’s causing them? I mean, what have you tried so far? Sleeping on the other side of the bed? Leaving the lights on? Pfft. Piker. Maybe the answer is a movie and dinner. With me.”
Julian shook his head as Mirabelle’s drinks arrived.
“That’s fine,” she said, examining her nails. “Clearly the dreams must not be that bad. Because if you really wanted them to stop, you’d try anything.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“If you know how it works, then why are you still having nightmares?” She took a long slurpy sip of her milkshake. “This is clearly a problem in search of a solution. Personally, if it was me, I’d try everything until they went away.”
Julian took a breath. “Everything?”
“Everything,” she repeated, lowering her voice another notch.
What was a man to do?
Her freshly washed long-flowing hair, her musky floral perfume, her slinky snug summer dress, the scent of coconut (!), her lovely face, all of her was stirring the swirling hot molasses inside his body.
He remembered that in his dreams she died. And he watched her die, knowing every second until her death that she was dying.
She rolled up a piece of napkin into a spitball and blew it at him from her straw.
“Are you thinking about how much you want the dreams to stop?”
“Something like that,” he said.
“So much that you’re finally willing to take a nice girl out to a movie and dinner?”
“Something like that. But you mean dinner and a movie, right?”
“No,” she said. “Movie first. Then dinner. You pick the movie.” She could barely keep her voice from exultation. “As long as it’s something vaguely superhero-y. And I’ll pick dinner. That’s only fair. But I pay for the movie, and you pay for dinner.”
“That’s only fair,” Julian said.
They went to ArcLight on Sunset to see a matinee of the latest Marvel flick. Mirabelle said she didn’t want any popcorn, and then munched on his the entire movie, sitting pressed against him, half turned to him, taking up his entire armrest, and constantly leaving her hand inside the bucket. “Popcorn’s good here,” she kept whispering. Of course it was freezing in the theatre and he had to give her his jacket. Now it smelled like her.
For dinner she chose the Chateau Marmont. She’d never been, she said, and always wanted to see what it was like. “Plus,” she said, as they were driving back west along Sunset, “it’s like the boxer Jack Johnson says—just because you have muscular strength and the courage to use it in violent contests with other men does not mean that you should lack appreciation for the finer things in life. I don’t know if you know this, Julian, but Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion of the world.”
Julian suppressed a laugh. “You’re quoting Jack Johnson to get me to take you to Chateau Marmont?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“A simple ‘I’d like to go’ would’ve done it.” He didn’t want to add that even a smile and asking nicely wasn’t necessary.
The valet at the Marmont said, “Are you staying with us tonight, sir?”
“No, no, just here for dinner,” Julian quickly replied, ushering Mirabelle up the steps to the elevator before she could make a joke out of it.
“Am I dressed okay?” she asked, applying bright red lipstick in the elevator mirror.
“Yes, you’re fine.”
“It’s a Diane von Furstenberg.” She twirled around. “Cost me a month’s rent, but it’s called a Julian chiffon wrap dress. Some coincidence, right? How do I look?”
“Fine.”
Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes. “You may look fly, Jules,” Mirabelle said, sauntering past him as the elevator doors opened, “but you got no game.”
Julian had never been accused of that before. “I meant, you look very nice.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
They walked up to the hostess podium. “It’s pretty here,” Mia whispered, looking around. “Swank. Art deco.”
The hotel lounge was long and dark, lit by fake candles and lined with velvet couches that were at the moment empty as it was still early. She said she liked it. She took Julian’s arm, pressing her body against his jacket. “Okay, Mister Smooth Talking Romeo, let’s go dine with the beautiful people.”
Under the glass ceiling of the outdoor veranda they sat in the back near the bar and watched the glitzy world fill up the restaurant, the famous filtering down into the center lounge, draping themselves carelessly over the low-backed chairs.
“Only celebrities can sit in the center, huh?” Mia said enviously. “Look at them, like they all live in The Great Gatsby. Don’t they know Gatsby was an indictment to their shallowness, not a tribute?”
“It was a little bit of a tribute, too,” Julian said. “No one wished harder or worked harder than Gatsby to turn his dream into reality. If only the beautiful people hadn’t been so shallow.”
The Avett Brothers kick-drummed their hearts and approached her door, and the Moscow mules went to Julian’s head. They must have gone to Mia’s, too, for she was half his size and was matching him drink for drink.
After they sat for hours, and he paid the check, they strolled to the darkened lobby lounge, where they ordered more drinks and she too draped herself carelessly over the arm of a red chair, her chiffon dress riding up, uncovering her thigh. “What do you think, do I look beautiful and shallow?” she asked, throwing back her head.
“Yes.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
They sank into the plush velvet couches. The glam of Hollywood filled up the rooms. Tipsy hours drifted by at the castle on a hill, while the chic celebrities bustled past them in their designer faded denim, wearing their rehearsed indifference like jewelry. The night was hot, and the fans failed to cool the stars whose skeletal bodies tottered by in their flamingo heels, the dazzling women with their fake casual men by their sides. Julian’s dazzling woman, dressed in petals and daisies, was neither skeletal nor indifferent, and he was neither fake nor casual. Z once took her to a bar downtown, Mia said; did he want to go? Julian said no. Too many Moscow mules for him to drive, and she said that was fine; and why would they leave here anyway when they had a lobby like a fantasy, and he said, yeah, that’s the reason.
“Well,” she said, bobbing sideways and affecting a serious tone, which was difficult considering her intoxicated reclining posture. “Aren’t you going to ask me what my favorite movie is?”
“Sure. What’s your favorite movie?”
“When We Were Kings. I don’t know if you know it. It’s about Muhammad Ali’s fight with George Foreman in Zaire.”
“Um, yes, I know it,” Julian said, his amusement rising, his tenderness rising, his lust rising, everything rising along with his heartbreak.
“Ask me what my favorite book is,” she said. “Besides yours, of course.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“The Fight,” she replied. “It’s Norman Mailer’s account of the Zaire match between Ali and Foreman.”
“I’m aware. It’s one of my favorites, too.”
“You don’t say.”
“When did you read it?”
She waved her hand around to some nebulous past. “So what’s a boxer’s favorite part of a joke?”
“I don’t know, what?”
“The punchline!”
And Julian laughed.
“Oh, and I have a life hack for you,” she said, languidly turning her head to him. “Did you know that alcohol is a fire starter?” She let her words linger.
“I knew that, yes,” Julian said, his head already turned to her. He let his words linger.
“Okay, now you tell me a life hack,” she said.
Not quick enough on his feet to come up with something more suggestive, Julian told her to put the little soaps she took from hotel rooms into her dresser drawers at home to keep everything smelling fresh and clean.
“What little soaps?”
“The ones they give you in hotel rooms,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Mia said. “I’ve never stayed in a hotel room.”
“You’ve never stayed in a hotel room?”
“Never,” she said nonchalantly. “We lived on the ocean. My dad and I worked the boardwalk. Where would we go, to another ocean, to other Luna Parks? After my dad died, my mom and I lived carefully and never went anywhere. She had money, but she was saving it for my Ivy League education—joke on her.”
“But not even later, by yourself? With . . .” Julian circled the air alluding to the guy she’d written to him about.
“The guy who wouldn’t watch my favorite movie with me?” she said. “Nah.”
Julian stared at her, unable to say all he wanted to say. Or anything, really.
Mirabelle waited, saying nothing herself, slurping the last of her icy drink, gazing around the dim lobby. The velvet place was dark, alit with firelight and chandeliers blue, and glimmering with L.A. goldlust.
“Mia, would you like me to ask if the Marmont has any rooms avai—”
“Yes,” she said before he was finished. “I’ve dreamed about seeing one of these rooms ever since Dominick Dunne lived here when he covered the OJ trial in 1994. It sounded so romantic.”
“The OJ trial?”
She giggled. “No, living in this hotel, writing copy on the balcony.”
They meandered to the front desk. The hotel had only one kind of room left—a two-bedroom suite on the top floor overlooking Los Angeles.
“That sounds nice,” Mia whispered. “And two bedrooms is perfect. One for you, one for me.”
The clerk trained his slow-blink stare on Julian.
“Thank you,” she said to Julian as he was paying. “I hope it wasn’t too expensive. It’ll be worth it if your dreams go away.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Tough break, then.”
“Do you have any luggage we can help you with, Mr. Cruz?”
“We have no luggage,” Mia said, holding on to Julian’s arm, swaying from the booze, her breast pressing into his tricep. “Not even a toothbrush.”
“Very well, miss. Have a good evening.”
The suite was spectacular. The stucco balcony, part of it covered by a striped awning, was forty feet long and lined with red-flowering planters. They could see the last of the dying sun streaking violet and pink over a million palm trees. The view took their words away, and for a few minutes they stood in silence. For some reason, even that felt painfully familiar to Julian—standing with her on a balcony, looking out onto the beauty beyond.
She slipped off her strappy sandals and walked around barefoot, excitedly examining the dining room table, the TV, the fully equipped kitchen. She checked out the two bathrooms, the two bedrooms. “I call dibs on this one,” she called to him from the master. He saw her bouncing up and down on the bed. “I could live here. It’s the nicest place I’ve ever been to.”
Julian’s fists were clenched, and he said nothing. His visions showed him she had been to many places.
She bounded out to the balcony and stood by his side. “Is your house nice like this? Does it have a view like this? How many bedrooms do you have? Four? Hey, so I could stay with you, too, in one of your spare rooms. What do you need so many rooms for? So, what do you dream about? Come on. You know the first fight we’ll have, you’re going to attack me with those dreams. You’re going to use them against me as a weapon. So why don’t you neutralize their power by telling me about them now, when you can use them on me not as vengeance but seduction.”
Mutely he regarded her. Was she joking?
“Don’t give me your penance stare, Ghost Rider,” she said, leaning back on her elbows against the stucco balustrade. “I can’t be shamed, I’ve done nothing wrong. Just tell me what you dream about.”
“No.”
She dropped herself into a chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs. “Okay, so what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” He stared out onto Los Angeles. “What do you want to do?”
“I wanted to talk.”
“Okay.” He sat down. “But not about the dreams.”
“Fine, about anything.”
But Julian couldn’t form words. She undid him. There was no sun in his bones, no light in his body. Free of gravity he flew above the moon, his soul broke loose. She was some terrible mutated sexual wandering spirit, almost whole. And then a different thing—an intoxicating, breathtaking thing—but death still came for her. All those graves, and a million miles of her to fill them all.
In silence they remained like this, sitting apart in their wicker armchairs. Music played somewhere down below, over the sound of dim laughing voices. Other voices.
Mirabelle inhaled like she was about to cry. “I don’t know why you’re acting like being here with me is the worst thing that ever happened to you,” she said, her soft voice breaking. “Do you want to just take me home?”
“I think I do, Mirabelle,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you so worried about? What makes you think if we got together that we’d even stay together? We wouldn’t, most likely. Nothing is permanent, especially in this town. Everything is just another set, waiting to be dismantled and hauled to the dumpster. We’d hook up, have some fun for a few weeks, a few laughs, nothing wrong with that. And then we’d go our separate ways.” Her lips quivered. “It would end the way most things end. I’d think about you for a while. Maybe you’d think about me. I’d ache for you a little bit, the way one does when things are over, even things that aren’t meant to be. I’d get busy with my life. You’d get busy with yours. We’d say we’d keep in touch. But we never would. And when people asked, we’d say we had a thing once, you and me. One minute it was, and the next it wasn’t. It didn’t mean it wasn’t real. It just wasn’t forever. And years later maybe we’d run into each other on the street somewhere, and you’d barely remember my name. And I’d barely remember yours. I’d say to you, hey, remember how you once loved me? And you’d say sorry, not really. And I’d say yeah, me neither.”
Julian’s eyes welled up. He couldn’t look at her.
Her shoulders were quaking. After a few moments she shrugged, like it was all never mind, got up and went inside. He heard her put on some music, a smoky R&B playlist. It sounded like Ginuwine. Yup. There was “Pony.”
“I want to take a shower before we go,” she said. “Our hot water tank broke. Is that okay?”
She showered with the door half open while Julian sat on the balcony and stared at the sky. He may have cried.
* * *
Barefoot she came out and sat in a wicker chair away from him.
Julian said nothing to greet her. He barely acknowledged she was near. But he smelled her. She smelled of coconut verbena.
“You said to always leave on a joke,” Mirabelle said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Do you ever sit on the bus, and the driver announces that the bus is being held at the station, and you think, gee, I wonder what it’s like to be held?”
Julian sucked in his breath at the suddenness of that, at the fragile look on her face, but said nothing.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “What kind of girl am I to come with a man I barely know to a hilly dark chateau where people die?”
“People live here, too,” he replied.
“Yes,” Mia said. “Other people. Who aren’t so blue. They come together under the stars, dance a little, maybe hum ‘Endless Love’ or ‘I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love With You.’”
Julian turned away from the night sky, to her. She was damp, wearing her wrap dress loose and barely tied. Underneath the sheer chiffon she was naked. Her eyes stared at him with ineffable longing.
“I hope that I don’t fall in love with you,” she whispered achingly.
“And I hope that I don’t fall in love with you,” he said.
“Okay, so don’t.”
Julian stood up.
Her stretched-out legs parted slightly. “Don’t fall in love with me,” she said. “But maybe you’d like to touch me?”
Love is modern like a Thursday night, and a black hole swallows every shooting star.
Julian stepped between her legs, leaned over her, his arms locked on the chair rests, and kissed her. Holding on to his forearms, she moaned, her head tipping up. The chair wobbled, out of balance, and they nearly fell back.
He knelt between her legs, wrapping his arms around her. Her arms wrapped around him. Julian couldn’t explain how full up he felt. And she kissed him back like she was pretty full up herself.
Let’s go inside, he whispered, tugging on her nipples through the silk, listening to her moan, running his hands under her dress.
No, she said. Right here. Under the open sky. The night was hot, a night of the tropics, not of the desert.
He pulled apart her wraparound dress. Her body spilled out.
You smell like coconut.
It’s coconut oil. I carry some with me. Do you like it?
I like you.
When his mouth found her nipples, she didn’t even try to keep quiet. And he kissed her as if he’d never touched a girl before, spread her open like he’d never seen a girl before. His fingers trembled. Her body trembled. He was still on his knees.
Mia, can you try to be quiet. He lowered his head between her legs.
If you try not to be afraid.
He made no promises.
You’re still wearing your clothes, and I’m naked, she whispered.
Yes. He caressed her.
Julian, look at me. Can you see me?
Oh, beautiful girl, I see you.
Put your hands on me. Her back arched.
They’re on you.
Put your lips on me. Her legs quivered.
They’re on you.
O my God.
O my God.
She couldn’t hold herself up. Clutching his head, she kept sliding forward. He had to stop. His mouth over her was about to bring the hotel security to their door.
Hoisting her into his arms, he carried her to the bedroom, her clinging to him like a marsupial, her bare buttocks in his palms. His clothes came off.
Finally, his hard body collided with her soft body.
She cried out like she was weeping.
Mia, Mia.
She was too open, too delicious, too defenseless, too willing to receive him, too excited to be touched by him, too fragile. She was too everything.
Whatever he did to her, she said was good.
It’s good, it’s good, it’s good.
Yeah, that’s good, too.
She turned over for him, let him press his hands into the small of her back, her face in the pillows. She lay flat on her stomach for him, her fingers spread out in the sheets.
Oh, it is so good.
Just make it last.
Briefly they lay in a saturated respite.
I’ve wanted to touch you for so long, Julian, she whispered, her hands stroking him gently, gently, gliding on him, caressing him. I wanted to feel you in my hands since I first met you. Since you wore your Armani to impress the understudy.
An Armani is timeless in any age, suitable for any occasion, he said. What I mean to say is, I’m glad I found my way into your hands.
I can’t explain it, she said. I looked at you, and it was like the light came on.
You don’t have to explain it, Mirabelle.
She knelt between his legs. I wanted to feel you in my mouth since the first day I met you. I know. I deserve your penance stare for that. It’s pretty shameful. She lowered her head to him, her long hair tickling his stomach.
Julian wanted to say he was glad he found his way into her mouth but couldn’t speak.
Afterward he asked her to get the coconut oil she carried in her bag.
She gave him the small jar. Will it be enough?
No, he said. But it will do. Rubbing it into his hands, he kneaded and caressed her whole warm moaning glistening body, circling her with his knuckles and palms from her neck to the soles of her feet. He made her slippery all over, as if she weren’t slippery enough, and then kissed her where his hands had just been, from her neck to the soles of her feet and everything in between. She moaned with the astonishment of angels. Her abandoned cries were a ratchet in his loins.
You are so sweet, Mia.
My God, it is so so good.
He soldered himself to her molten body.
She was gasping, and helpless, and wordless, and writhing. One unbroken rapture, one continuous cry.
Release brought tears that felt like happiness but looked like pain.
Release brought tears that looked like happiness but felt like pain.
Oh, Julian, she whispered, kissing his neck, holding his face, how do you know how to touch me like that?
Like what, Mia? Shh. Don’t cry, why are you crying? He wiped the tears from her eyes.
Like I love to be touched, how do you know how to do that? Who are you? Why do you make love to me like you know me?
He wanted to tell her it was true: she felt familiar—yet new. He had seen her in his dreams and sometimes, before they turned into nightmares, he touched her. But not like this. Nothing was like this. Because the impassioned drenched girl in his hands was real.
Love me until I say no more, the real girl whispered, giving her body to him over and over. Take me until I say no more.
But she wouldn’t say no more.
Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me.
What she said was, Julian, my every breath exhales me and inhales you until all that’s left inside me is you. All that’s left inside me is you, Julian. Do you hear me?
I do. All that was inside me is now inside you. He watched her face. Why are you looking at me like that?
Like what?
I don’t know. Like I’m all you want.
Do anything you want, she whispered in reply, grabbing on to the headboard. Take anything you want.
And Julian took it.
Deep in the night, she went to get him water. He looked thirsty to her, Mirabelle said. She rummaged through the shelves in the kitchen to find a tic tac. She turned on the oven. She called room service from the living area, quietly talked to them on the phone, waited for them by the door, and tipped the guy out of her own money. Julian waited on the bed, flat on his back, knocked down but not out. Something smelled good, besides her. A toaster popped. She brought in toast and jam and hot tea with lemon—and warm chocolate chip cookies. I baked them, she said. I asked room service for cookie dough. They were very accommodating. A man needs his strength, she said. You never know what he might be called upon to do.
You mean there is something more he might be called upon to do? Julian said.
She watched him eat and drink, and then crawled into his arms, pressing her body into him, stroking him with her slickened hands.
Why can’t I get enough of you? she murmured. I’ve had so much of you. Too much. I’m raw. Yet I still want more.
He pushed the plate of food onto the floor.
You want more?
Her arms flew above her head. Her body softened, flattened out.
Mia, Mia.
She cried out.
Come inside me again, come inside me, come inside, come.
She makes hungry where she most satisfies.