Bobby noticed the sign and smirked sympathetically. “Were you up for that?”

Suzanne pretended to be interested in her gun. “I’ll get over it,” she said stoically.

“When?” Bobby asked, turning the car around and heading back.

“When I have my therapy breakthrough and nothing bothers me anymore.”

“You know,” he said, “there are people who feel bad because they didn’t get this movie. What would you tell them?”

“To rethink their careers,” she said. “I’m always rethinking mine. It keeps my skin soft.”

“Do you think you’ll stay in show business till the end of this picture?” he asked.

“Do you mean this show business, or the glamorous, fun show business?” Suzanne asked.

“This show business,” he said dramatically, gesturing grandly and stopping the car. Suzanne looked around and saw that the entire crew was mooning her and singing “Happy Birthday.” Marilyn stood at the car holding a chocolate cake with thirty-one candles.

“I had the worst ass, so I got to present the cake,” she said, smiling.

“It’ll be hard to forget this,” said Suzanne, blushing like a desert rose.

“Still,” Bobby said, “maybe with enough therapy . . .”

“There isn’t enough therapy,” said Suzanne.

Dysphoria

She was going to a party, but she was pregnant and she didn’t want to bring the baby, so she took it out and left it home. While she was at the party, she realized that you can’t do that with babies, so she went home. When she got there, the baby was blue, so she panicked and tried to get it back in. “How could I have done this?” she thought. “How could I have not known what would happen? I didn’t even want to go to the party.”

All of a sudden she was flying, soaring over great stretches of countryside, and it was wonderful. Wonderful. Then, in the middle of her flight, she thought, “I can’t fly!” and she realized she wasn’t flying at all but was actually falling from a great height. She was trying to get the wind under her arms to keep herself in the air when someone on the ground started shooting at her. She felt completely exposed. She couldn’t hide, couldn’t duck the bullets. She wanted to get farther inside her clothes. There was nowhere to go. She couldn’t go down because they were shooting at her, but they were shooting at her so it wasn’t safe to stay in the sky.