Chapters (55)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of Characters
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Part Two
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- A note on the Author
I was going through Scott’s briefcase, looking for this month’s Vanity Fair, when I found the first card. It was a picture of the Statue of Liberty. At first, I was so crazed that I thought Ruby had written on the back of a photo of herself. And then I remembered New York and Staten Island, something about a ship full of immigrants and a lady with a lamp welcoming them. The cold. The hungry. The disillusioned by ten years of marriage.
“Hope all is well on the West Coast. I will see you in a few months.” I pictured her living in the torch, peering, cold, across the water, marble in oxidized copper. “Of course,” I reasoned, “statues don’t stand in line for stamps,” and I adapted the story in her head, so that the white marble was in fact an elaborate Alexander McQueen dress. Knowing what I did about her, it would not be too far-fetched to imagine Ruby wearing Alexander McQueen to run her errands.
I saw her once in real life, at a black-tie charity gala. Ruby was wearing jeans, moccasins, and a ripped Sex Pistols tank top. Scott had commented on how dirty she looked. The next day she was photographed shopping for groceries in a $5,000 backless Halston gown.
The beautician, dutifully, ran the current through the sparse, pale hairs on my upper lip. I jolted and shivered and thought about how much I hated my life. Every time my skin was steamed and squeezed, I prayed that the beautician would leap back, alarmed by the hideous black sludge emerging from my pores. But nothing came out. It wasn’t a completely wasted session. It hurt just enough to make my eyes tear and heart harden.
I didn’t care a damn about Scott, not anymore. I cared about what he was doing, and who he was doing it with, why and what I had done wrong, but not about him. He was irrelevant now.
I found it when I got home, in the sleeve of an Elvis Costello record. Scott kept his vinyl proudly, as if to say, “I may be a fuckoff powerful Hollywood producer but I can still get down.” He had the CDs too. He had them both, just in case. In case he met a vengeful God. As if buying more, rather than less, would save him.
It was a postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“It is so beautiful, I thought this was a good reason to write. This is just a quick note to say ‘hi!,’ lighter than the last time I wrote. I miss you. I will see you soon. Love Ruby xoxo.”