Pallucci was into kinky stuff. He kept an arsenal of paraphernalia under his bed: vibrators, massage oils, silk cords with Velcro ties. He bought a Pilates machine “strictly for sex.” We spent hours in his apartment contorting into different, often ridiculous positions, in pursuit of bigger, better orgasms. His attention was validating. Plus, it kept me from going to my dealer.

Since the night I laid awake at Roger’s, I’d kept at least one of my promises to God: I’d been trying to find Nicole. Steffi’s number was disconnected and Café Figaro’s, the last place Nicole worked, said they hadn’t seen her in years. I hired a private investigator, who turned up a P.O. box in New Mexico for Nicole’s father, her WPE. I wrote to him but never heard back. I was clueless about where to look next. One thing was for sure, if she wanted to see me, I was easy to find.

INT. WINNEBAGO

SUNSET GOWER STUDIO

DAY

1992

BELLS ARE RINGING FOR AMBER and STORM!

After two years of straining the limits of daytime television permitted foreplay, Amber and Storm were getting married and the network predicted record-breaking ratings. Peter and I were on the cover of Soap Digest. TV Guide and People were arriving to cover the ceremony. Further fueling the excitement was the tabloid scandal that dogged us ever since I’d been thrown out of Peter’s house. Paparazzi followed me everywhere. For a time, they’d camped out at Pallucci’s, but once we exhausted the Pilates and paraphernalia, the relationship ground to a halt like old batteries in a vibrator.

On Amber’s nuptial day, I was holed up and pacing in my Winnebago anxiously awaiting the outcome of Penny Peyser’s negotiation with the network. My contract was due to expire and according to Penny, with the wedding hoopla and high ratings, it was the optimum time to go to the table. When I’d started on Circle, I’d been making scale, fifteen hundred dollars a week minus the ten percent that went to my agent.

Now, Penny was asking for what I considered an exorbitant twenty thousand an episode which, she argued was commiserate with my popularity and “celebrity status.”

I was corseted in a wedding gown so sheer and low-cut my nipples had to be covered with Band-Aids and so tight I couldn’t sit, much less breathe. A veil was pinned onto my head, and I tried not to trip on the train as I teetered around my trailer on four-inch pumps that already gave me blisters.