Yes, I heard him going around town saying how much he loved me, but that doesn’t matter one iota because he couldn’t help me. I was begging him to help but he couldn’t understand. He thought help was going down on me. He thought that made me happy, made me saner with each lick. The only part I liked was being fucked, no orgasm in sight, just something huge inside of me, filling out the spaces coveted by demons. I tried to get him to smash me, so that the demons would be smashed too. But he wanted to be nice and slow and please me. He didn’t understand.

I would try not to be sad, but I couldn’t help it. And it wasn’t long before his concern turned to frustration and then to disdain. “For Christ’s sake, Ruby, cheer the fuck up.” I heard it as “Cheer the fuckup!”

I pictured myself being encouraged from the sidelines of the football field by a squadron of tan blond girls: “Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate? Breakdown girl! Breakdown girl! Go! Go! Go!” And so I behaved like even more of a fuckup, because the girls in my head wanted it so much. When I slumped over the dinner table, head in hands, Sebastian would say, “Stop acting out!” It was a phrase he had heard from my therapist in a session he attended with me, and he put it to good use.

I wonder, sometimes, if I might have stayed afloat longer if I hadn’t been with a man who had so very few problems of his own. The only problem he admitted to was me.

“You know, Ruby,” he threatened after a fight one night, “I don’t know that it’s such a good idea for me to be seen out with you. You’re too volatile. It’s not good for someone in my line of work.”

“Bullshit. You’re a personal assistant. How many personal assistants actually get to date the movie stars they work for?”

“And how many movie stars are being put off from hiring me because of my association with you?”

“You motherfucker.” His mother was beautiful. She loved him. He should fuck her.

“Oh come on. You don’t do the premieres. You don’t cooperate with the press. You’re not putting yourself out there, unless it’s some awful, tabloid shot of you shoveling donuts in your mouth.”

“You said you liked my body. I thought you liked me this way?”

“I do like your body. You’re just so unhealthy. It’s disgusting.” He calmed down. His voice lowered as he tried to say, as nicely as he could, that he could help me formulate a better diet. “If you just had a plate of steamed vegetables every day instead of all that greasy carbohydrate and empty sugar calories …”

“Oh, fuck you.”