“Okay,” I nodded, leaning in to kiss him and again he let me.

“Ruby, I’m not looking for a lover right now.”

“Okay,” I nodded, touching my mouth to his in agreement.

“Ruby. At the end of any relationship there is a check to pay. And with you it would be a very big check. A check that I cannot afford.”

I took my tongue out of his mouth and murmured, “I’ll pay it, silly billy. I’ve got money.”

“I don’t like money …”

“So let me handle it.”

“Oh God, don’t talk about handling money. Handling money, the physical day-to-day process of touching dollar bills with the flesh on our fingers, is what’s making us ill.”

I put my tongue back in my own mouth and blinked my eyes in bemusement.

“Why do you think Donald Trump is so ugly? Or Rupert Murdoch? Have you ever stopped to wonder why, why do millionaires, billionaires, tycoons, and thieves look the way they do? Did Donald Trump always look like that? Did Andrew Lloyd Webber always look like that? No, they were ordinary little boys and ordinary men, and then they happened to rub their bodies in bills and it infected their blood. They’re only half alive. You’re still beautiful, Ruby, but you’re only half alive.”

“Jesus Christ! I’m not that rich!” and I pulled as far away from him as the room would allow because, although he had said I was beautiful, he had also used the word “ugly” in a nearby sentence.

“You were in that movie last summer, right? You’ll be in another movie this summer. You’re rich enough.”

“So you’re not going to get involved with me because I make too much money?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” I spat and stormed out in a huff which is, at least, cheaper than a taxi. I huffed all the way back to my apartment, where I stopped huffing and cried instead. “I want Sebastian, I want Sebastian to be here,” I wailed to myself.

Aslan had made a moral choice and it was final. It didn’t matter what I wore or if I washed my hair and shaved my legs in voodoo anticipation of ensnaring him. He would not bite. The only route left to me was that of understanding and modesty. I practiced my expressions long and hard in my bathroom mirror.

“Aslan,” I breathed, cornering him “by accident” at his local bodega, “I know you’ve made a decision about me, and I respect it. I understand it. I mean, I don’t understand it. Not at all. But I understand that it has been made with what you deem good reason, and I would not disrespect you by asking you to bend your rules for me, who is nothing, who is no more than a silly little film actress.”